


A Ticket Home

by flollius



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: 1950s, Angst because it's me, Bilbo is a closet perv who wants it bad, Canon rewrite of sorts, Homophobia, Institutionalised Racism against dwarves, Kíli Is a Little Shit, M/M, Races are most definitely the same, So it's basically canon right, Thilbo, This is much less serious than it sounds though I promise, Thorin is so emotionally constipated, and FIli carries the entire Line of Durin's angst on his shoulders, bagginshield, modern au with a twist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:46:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 63,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flollius/pseuds/flollius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A formerly brilliant doctoral student and currently mediocre bookshop owner, Bilbo Baggins is quite happy to live in the quiet obscurity of his distant hometown of Hobbiton, his dreams of uncovering the history of Middle-Earth locked away in ruins and ancient manuscripts all but forgotten. </p><p>He's happy until one day a colleague of Thorin Oakenshield, a battle-wearied campaigner for dwarvish civil rights determined to uncover the true story of his people, invites him to join a dangerous and illegal excavation in the ruins of Erebor. What Thorin and Bilbo uncover about the ancient history of a now impoverished and culturally destitute people, about the efforts undergone to conceal it, and about their own troubled lives, have consequences for the past, present and future that neither of them could have ever imagined.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was so much fun to write and I am genuinely SO EXCITED to start working on it. 
> 
> I think the biggest inspiration came for this was when I was thinking about Tolkien and about his interplay between history and fantasy through the lens of mid-20th century England. And I thought - what if I reimagined Tolkien's fantasy world within the context of his own reality? And I am just really really into English novels from around the 20's-50s at the moment and it's just great. One other thing that really inspired me is the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo, an Anglo-Saxon burial ground from a period that hovers at that very uncertain edge between history and myth, and how having that physical evidence led to such a dramatic reassessment of a people which had often before then been regarded as barbaric and uncultured.
> 
> So, yeah, this is basically a love letter to Tolkien and the academic world in which he lived when he wrote LOTR/The Hobbit with a bit of the gay thrown in. Because we all love the gay.

“Hobbiton, Hobbiton!”

Balin jerked awake at the piercing whistle, rubbing at his eyes. The guard bellowed in the hall just beyond his compartment, a stout little man with a hat too big for him and a jacket that didn’t quite fit comfortably over his belly. He looked blearily out at the platform, taking in the station. It was a soft lemon-yellow with white wooden trim, built in the colonial style even though it couldn’t have been more than thirty years old. It was only quite recently that Hobbiton, and indeed, the Shire proper, had been added to the sprawling network between the western shores and the Orocani Mountains in the east.

Balin picked up his book, making sure the papers inside were all in order, and tucked it under his arm, taking his coat and hat. His suitcase was stored in the compartment overhead and he had to get the guard to bring it down for him, giving a stiff, sleepy thanks. The dwarf stepped onto the platform as the train gave its final whistle, clouds of steam billowing in the air. It was a pretty, sunny spring afternoon, and the sun was already hot. Balin paused to wipe his forehead with a somewhat grubby handkerchief, juggling between his book, hat, suitcase and coat.

“Er, excuse me.” He approached the visitor’s centre, a charming little booth set up in the station. The young attendant, almost lost behind wire racks bursting with maps and postcards, smiled.

“Good afternoon, master dwarf! Welcome to Hobbiton. How may I help you on this fine afternoon?”

“Ah, well, I’m here to meet a potential business partner.” Balin popped his hat on his head and rifled through the papers in the front of his book. “A Mr Bilbo Baggins. I believe he runs a bookshop.”

“Ah, old Bilbo!” The hobbit beamed. “Of course, he’s a lovely fellow. On half the boards and societies in this town you know, always contributing to this and that. Yes, just walk down the platform that way,” he pointed “and then turn left, and you’ll be on the High Street. He’s in the Scribbled Quire, between the butcher’s and Nora’s flower shop. You won’t miss it.”

“Thank you very much.” Balin tipped his hat. “Good day.”

“And to you too!” The hobbit smiled at his back.

Hobbiton appeared to in essence be a little intersection of perhaps half-a-dozen streets, all clustered with quaint shops, exclusively selling in things like haberdashery, baskets, hair waxes, fabrics, cakes, newspapers, candles, wind-up toys, antique furniture, medicinal tonics, soaps, bicycle parts, hats, tea, porcelain crockery, walking sticks, waistcoats and herbs and spices. There was a notable lack of shoe stores and cobblers. Balin ambled slowly, drinking in the sun, the gentle chatter that bubbled around him, the bright shop windows and little tables that were sometimes set outside.

He turned left at the intersection between Station Road and High Street, keeping to the footpath, although he didn’t need to. A motorcar was a rare sight, accompanied by screaming children, laughing and waving along behind. Quite a few young hobbits wobbled on bicycles, skirts hitched up to the knee and bells ringing, but most walked, their broad, leathery feet padding quietly on the cobblestones.

The Scribbled Quire was one of those little stores, with a lead-lighted front window and a slightly faded sign hanging over the door. Balin took off his hat and stepped inside, blinking at the dim light. It was a narrow shop, crammed with shelves that reached the ceiling in rather lopsided aisles, the walls lined with more books. Behind the counter at the back, a young hobbit girl was writing sums in a ledger, frowning through her owlish spectacles. Pasted on each shelf was a card, written in a neat hand, advising the subject - literature, history, geography, politics. There was a muffled, quiet atmosphere, and the air significantly cooler. It reminded Balin of being underground.

“Ah, hello.” He approached the counter with a smile. The girl looked up, giving him a warm, unsurprised smile. Hobbiton was slowly becoming used to tourists. “Begging your pardon, but my name is Balin Longbeard. I’ve come to speak to a Mr Baggins. We’ve been in correspondence over the telephone, but I don’t believe he’s expecting me.”

“Certainly, Mr Longbeard.” She smiled again. “Bilbo’s in the back room at the moment, but he shan’t be a while. I’ll let him know you’re waiting.”

“Thank you.” She disappeared, and Balin browsed the shelf nearest to him. He jostled the coat and suitcase to one arm, the brim of his smart hat wedged under his chin so he could take out a book one-handed for a closer look. _Elvish Riddles and Rhymes in the Third Age._ Yes, Bilbo Baggins was certainly a scholar.

“Just go on through.” She had a sweet voice for such a drab, plain girl. Balin imagined she must be pretty in the summertime, when the village centre was filled with music and everyone wore their best frocks and went dancing. “He’s on the telephone right now, but he said he’ll be as quick as he can.”

Balin thanked her and went behind the counter, passing into the little back room. While the front was muffled, cool and orderly, the back was a bright, haphazard mess. A writing desk stood in one corner with the shelf folded down. A brass typewriter had been set up with a letter half-written. There were several crumpled pieces of paper at the feet of the chair, which was piled high with books. _Everything_ was piled high with books, or boxes of books, or stacks of papers, magazines, newspapers, letters. Side plates scattered with crumbs or empty cups of tea were balanced somewhat precariously on top. The square table in the middle was lost beneath this forest of books and paper, the spindly chairs draped in coats, scarves and hats and groaning under the weight of yet more books. Against one wall was a sideboard and a counter, the only thing not covered in paper and ink and piled instead with dishclothes, dirty dishes and empty packets of biscuits.

And in the middle of all of this stood Bilbo Baggins. He was stout and short like almost all of his people, a mop of tousled hair almost hiding his comically large ears. He was still young, Balin reminded himself, about forty-five, if his estimates were correct, with a hobbitish face, round and ageless, and an odd snub-nose. With his breeches, suspenders, waistcoat and bare, hairy feet, he looked like a bookend, a little painted figure one would would find in their grandmother’s garden between the overgrown begonias.

“No– You listen to me! You’re being quite rude.” Bilbo was on the telephone, pacing while he talked. The receiver was in the crook of his neck and he held the phone proper in one hand, the other clutching what appeared to be a typewritten sheet of accounts. “I’m looking right here at your inventory and you professed just two months ago to have _thirteen_ copies of Fengel’s lyrics. I have a buyer at his wit’s end and he’s a very good customer of mine.” Bilbo looked up and mouthed a _sorry_ at Balin before returning to the phone. “What? No, I don’t mean Fengred I mean _Fengel…_ Yes he is, he’s one of the most famed southern naturalist poets of the mid-Sixth Age!... Well, yes, maybe you should read him… Check your records again! Honestly, what kind of circus are you running over there?... Yes, you do that then. Good… Good. I shall expect confirmation tomorrow. Yes, good day to you too.” Bilbo set the phone down quite heavily and let the paper fall on the table, pausing with a sigh before lifting his gaze to the rather out-of-sorts dwarf standing in the doorway.

“My apologies, I do hate losing my temper in such a way, but Grubb & Green only seem to get a hurry-on with tricky orders and lost books when you start to shout at them.” Bilbo held out his hand. “Bilbo Baggins, pleasure to meet you.”

“Er, Balin.” He wedged his hat under his chin again to shake Bilbo’s hand. “Fantastic, fantastic honour to finally see you in person, Mr Baggins.”

“Sit down, sit down.” Bilbo gestured to the cluttered table then paused, realising his mistake. “Oh,” he picked up the stack of books from the nearest chair and made room on the table. Several old newspapers, open to the crossword and filled in blue ink, fell to the floor, but Bilbo didn’t seem to mind. “Sorry, I don’t take people in here usually. I prefer to speak on the telephone.” Bilbo turned to the counter and flicked on his electric kettle. “Tea? I’m afraid I don’t have any coffee. I can’t stand the stuff.”

“Tea would be marvellous, thank you.” Balin hung his coat over the back of the chair and put his hat on the table. “I’m quite parched.”

“Ah, yes, it must be a real journey from Olvath. Here, have a biscuit.” Bilbo set down a tin of sugared shortbreads. “I must say, beg pardon for my rudeness, but you have come an awfully long way. I hope it’s not just to see me.”

“It is, Mr Baggins.” Balin nibbled on a corner. “In fact, I’m not only here to see you, but to put forward a rather unusual request.”

Bilbo sat down next to him, a little frown on his face. “Oh?”

“Do you remember our telephone conversation and written correspondence?” Balin wiped the crumbs on his trousers and opened the cover of his rather worn book.

“Ah, yes, you found several artefacts and wanted somebody to look at them. I certainly do, it left me quite puzzled. I wasn’t aware you would contact me in person without warning.” The hobbit looked over his shoulder to check the warming kettle.

“This is the sort of thing you can’t really ask over the phone.” Balin took out a slim handful of photographs, nestled safely between the pages of his thick novel. Bilbo rested one arm on the table, listening. “Now, you must be aware of the scholarship founded approximately forty years ago by Thorin Oakenshield when he first took the East Duilwen seat.”

“Oh, of course. I think it’s wonderful.” Bilbo brightened. “It’s wonderful that he’s in parliament at all. It was such a victory for dwarves, when he won that seat.”

“It certainly was.” Pride swelled in Balin’s stomach at the memory. “What I haven’t told you, because until now we were not certain of the role we needed you to take, is that Thorin and I are very good friends, and until recently, work colleagues.”

“Are you?” Bilbo started. Behind him, the kettle started to bubble. “Goodness, really?”

“I worked as his chief policy advisor until several years ago and I thought it best to retire, rest these old bones and let the new blood come through.” Balin rested the photographs face down on the table. “But back to the scholarship. The most recent was taken by Ori, a Longbeard, of course, and a brilliant young fellow. He studied Geology in Mordor, in particular volcanology.”

“All right.” There was a frown on Bilbo’s face as confusion set in, and he clearly tried to draw a connection between himself and Ori. The kettle had finished boiling. “Do you mind if I…?”

“No, no, go ahead.” Bilbo stood up. “The point is, for part of his graduate research, he conducted a solo geological survey of the extinct volcano, Erebor. Thorin managed to work around the trespass laws and get him special permission.”

“Extinct?” Bilbo paused in his pouring of the tea. “I believed it was active, or at least dormant. They’re always going on about warnings and no-flight zones and no access allowed and all that.”

“Ori believed so too, until he saw it with his own eyes. He insists that the volcanic rock he excavated is at least twenty thousand years old. Oh, thank you.” Balin accepted his teacup. “And Ori didn’t just find rocks on Erebor. He found antiquities, which I asked you to examine.” Balin turned the photographs over and handed them to Bilbo. “Just the photos, I’m afraid. We’ve cleaned them as best we can, but we’re no archeologists. The museum doesn’t know about this. Very, very few people, in fact, do.”

Bilbo looked through the photos, gaping. “These are astonishing.” Balin smiled. “This comb - it’s late Third Age, without a doubt. Look at the designs on the casing. And this old axe-head, it looks almost from the same era. _Makharrakhul_.” He read the runes aloud on the blade. “That which continues to torture.”

“You know my people’s ancient tongue far better than I.” There was a solemn note to Balin’s voice, touched with reverence.

“These pieces are beautiful. Perfect extant examples of their kind. This sort of craftsmanship is almost non-existent.” Bilbo looked up from the photographs. “They should be cleaned properly and preserved, Balin. Give them to a museum. They need to be displayed.”

“What if I were to tell you,” Balin leaned in. “That I believe this is just the beginning? I believe we haven’t even scratched the surface of what lies beneath that mountain.” Bilbo’s eyes grew wide. “You know the old legends of Erebor, of the dwarvish kings who ruled with gold-hoards bigger than could be imagined.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve read the texts.” Although he tried to brush Balin off, Bilbo took a gulp of tea to calm himself down, a gleam visible in his soft eyes. “The _gabshêl_ lost to dragon’s flame and never recovered.”

“Yes, and elves and men say that Smaug was really a volcanic eruption and the gold was always just a legend.” Balin locked his gaze with the hobbit. “Mr Baggins, there was no eruption. That mountain has been extinct since long before dwarves ever settled in her roots.”

“That’s a very bold claim.” Bilbo spoke cautiously.

“And I will repeat it to anybody who takes me seriously.” Balin opened his book again. “I have here a letter personally written and signed by Thorin Oakenshield himself.” He handed the envelope over. Bilbo took it, mouth gaping. “He asks that you come back with me to Olvath and speak to him. He is planning to send a team to Erebor to uncover her secrets, and he wants you there.”

“Me?” Bilbo sputtered, “But— I only had half a doctorate. I’m no scholar, Balin. I haven’t touched any real texts or artefacts in twenty years at least. I’m not _qualified_ , it’s just a hobby now really. No, no, thank you for the offer, but I think it best you find somebody else.” He tried to push Thorin’s letter back across the table, but Balin cupped his palm over Bilbo’s hand, refusing to let him push it away.

“There is nobody else.” He spoke softly, painfully aware that this was their only chance. “We don’t want some dusty old academic tied up in university rules and protocol and who just wants to further their name and confirm their prejudices. We want somebody who’s young, who understands us and who can work with us.” Balin’s grip relaxed. “I read your article in the Ancient Arts Quarterly you submitted during your doctoral studies.” Bilbo’s face went tight at that, eyes narrowing just a fraction. “It was how I tracked you down. You completely reassessed the contribution of Khuzdul poetry to the Elvish literary tradition with previously unstudied manuscripts. It was phenomenal.”

“I’m surprised they even let me publish it, to be quite honest with you.” That tight looked was softening with the memory. “But yes, I was proud of that paper. I made people talk and that was what I’d intended.”

“Your doctorate thesis would have been remarkable.” Bilbo shut down very quickly, going blank and closed-off. Balin’s chest clenched in regret. “Apologies, I know there must have been some difficulties.”

“There was unpleasantness, yes.” Bilbo forced a smile, but there was a restricted sorrow in his eyes, an untold story that would never be brought to light. “Academia isn’t my life anymore, Mr Balin, and I’m not entirely sorry to say that. I don’t think I was quite the right fit for it.”

“You’re the right fit for this.” Balin said softly. “You know our people, our history, our language and culture better than almost all dwarves do. We need an expert to guide us.” There was a pulse throbbing in Bilbo’s throat, heavy and nervous. “For too long, we dwarves have been regarded as lesser beings, a poor fourth to elves, men and orcs. They say we have no education, no culture, and they used that to dominate us, and now we’re so broken we think it’s true. If we can prove people wrong and show that yes, once upon a time we were just as wealthy and powerful as the greatest kings of elves and men…” Balin paused for air, getting breathless in his passion. “Maybe it can inspire people to work towards being equal citizens and getting the rights we deserve. Getting the vote and getting Thorin in office was just the beginning, Bilbo.” He forgot to call him Mr Baggins in his excitement, feeling his face flush red.

Bilbo stared down at the photographs of the ancient dwarvish treasures. There was a once-silver goblet, a belt-buckle, a piece of a helm and a ring with the axe-head and comb, a treasure-hoard in itself that already rivalled the greatest dwarvish finds locked away in museums and galleries. Balin closed his book, leaving the letter and the photographs on the table, draining his tea.

“It is a lot to consider all at once. All the formal information is within that letter. Please, Mr Baggins, at least give Thorin’s offer some decent thought before you reject it.” Bilbo picked up the photograph of the helm-piece, tracing the detail on the tarnished, degrading, dirt-encrusted iron. “I will be back in the morning at ten minutes to nine to await your answer.” Balin stood up and threw his coat back over one arm, donning his hat. “It was a pleasure to speak with you and be welcomed into your domain. Thank you very much for the tea and biscuit.”

“Er— yes.” Bilbo jerked out of his stupor, obviously very far away. “Thank you for coming, and… I will think on this tonight.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Tomorrow morning, I shall have my answer.”

“Good day, Mr Baggins.” Balin stood in the doorway. “And I hope you come to the right decision.” He allowed himself one last, small smile before he turned and left.


	2. Chapter 2

The letter was put out of sight, but not out of mind. Bilbo filed it away in his rather scuffed calfskin folio case, a present from his grandmother after he graduated with first-class honours and his future was still bright. He spent the rest of the day chasing down orders, reorganising shelves that had gone higgledy-piggledy from constant rifling, searching for a lost paperback that he _knew_ he saw a month or so ago and looking over his accounts. At five o’clock, he bade Marigold goodnight, put on his hat, turned the sign from ‘open’ to ‘closed’, and locked the front door.

Sunshine lingered in the tops of buildings, and there was a warm, gentle breeze. Bilbo nodded at passers-by and waved and smiled at half-a-dozen cheery ‘Bilbo, old chap!’s on his way home, stopping off at the butcher and grocer on the way for supper. He wore his smile like a prefect’s badge pinned proudly to his lapel, kept it bright and shining. It faded only when he’d made it home, taken in the post, hung up his hat, packed away his wrapped sausages, butter and eggs in the refrigerator and turned on the kettle. Automatically, he made tea and cut himself a slice of lemon-and-poppyseed cake, sitting down with a copy of the evening post at the kitchen table. Bilbo thought that the longer he put off reading that letter, the longer he had before forcing himself to make a decision, and the longer he could continue on with his normal life. There was an unusual, tense atmosphere in his cheery little kitchen. Bilbo knew that after he read the letter, everything in his life would change. So he read the paper first, even the dreadful society page and the sports section and advertisements for face-creams and undergarments and home appliances.

Bilbo had become in his middling age a creature of routine, and the sudden interruption of his perfectly pleasant, slightly dull life by this strange dwarf had rattled him, shaken awake something that had been slumbering very deep inside of him for a long time. He turned on his wireless and boiled several young potatoes, pacing with his arms crossed as he waited for his dinner to cook, constantly throwing glances over his shoulder at his folio case propped up on his spare chair. He tried pacing through the rest of the flat instead, going from the kitchen to his neat little parlour to the study to the bedroom, where he found himself staring at a photograph on his dresser. It was taken at Rivendell on the day he graduated, outside the old assembly hall. Bilbo was smiling self-consciously in his Bachelor’s robes and his parents beamed on either side, dressed up in their best wedding clothes, holding him like a trophy. Bilbo picked up the photograph in its silvered frame and sank down on the edge of his bed, wearing that same smile again, aged and faded in memory.

He had always been ‘bright’, Bilbo Baggins. His father wanted the best for him and his mother, cleverer than Bungo and stubborn to a fault, was determined that Bilbo would ‘do well’. After his glowing first exams in his modest Hobbiton schoolhouse, Belladonna Took promptly enrolled him at Stonewell Grammar in Bree, where Bilbo slept in a dormitory with sixteen other young boys, studied long into the night, and took the bus home on weekends. Bilbo had an earnest curiosity that was quite singular amongst hobbits, and took to his education like a duck to water. His headmaster at Stonewell recommended him for the entrance examinations to Upton, a rather severe grammar school in the Grey Havens with a preponderance to turn out politicians, policy-makers, lawyers, doctors, and other sorts of people who generally ‘did well’. Bilbo not only passed his entrance examination, he received a full scholarship and in the autumn was sent away with his suitcase packed with books and starched shirts, his mother waving him goodbye on the platform with a wide smile and tears in her eyes. Bilbo was eleven years old.

Unlike Stonewell, where Bilbo had coasted somewhat on his natural ability, Upton demanded perfection from the outset. Bilbo studied alongside children of MPs and Lords, played cricket (his short, stocky build made him a fantastic wicketkeeper), borrowed volumes of history and poetry from his classmates and returned them in good nick, joined a debating team and wrote vulgar Sindarin in the margins of his exercise books. His mother quietly hoped he would study law or science but Bilbo gravitated towards history, literature and languages. It was also at Upton that Bilbo realised he was rather different to the rest of his classmates in one earth-shattering way; he didn’t like girls. He passed it off for the first few years as his slow, hobbitish maturity and it would all work out in time, but after a rather dangerous rendezvous with a classmate in his sixth form, Bilbo came to the sickening conclusion that he was troubled, and the best thing to do would be to put it aside completely, focus on his studies, and hope that when he was a proper grown-up it would all sort itself out. His adolescence passed in a blur of ink and paper and seven years later Bilbo emerged with an acceptance letter to Rivendell University to study a Bachelor of Arts and a general sense of uncertainty about himself and his future.

Rivendell soothed his fears and gave him a whole set of new ones. Several of his classmates from Upton made it to Rivendell and they met once or twice a month over red wine to gossip and complain about their lecturers. Those awkward, gangly boys he spent his days with blossomed over the course of the summer to handsome young men, mature and driven, which to Bilbo was the most painful sort of ecstasy he could imagine. He abandoned debating and cricket, finding the late-night drinking sessions and locker rooms too risky, throwing himself breathlessly into his studies with a vigour that impressed his professors and left his classmates jealous. Bilbo was determined to keep his head down, earn his degree, and try to work through the process cleanly and gracefully. He decided to concentrate on ancient languages, a field that satiated his hunger for literature and history, studying Sindarin, classical Black Speech and from his second year, Khuzdul. Khuzdul, to Bilbo, was like a key to a locked door that had been untouched for centuries. Apart from his professor (who went on to be his primary doctoral supervisor) the dwarvish language was largely unstudied, regarded as something without literary merit, a language of savages and brutes. Bilbo read from a very slim handful of unedited manuscripts and memorised half-lines of poetry carved in crumbling tombs and unearthed sword-hilts and combs, putting together a world that existed in fragments and coming away with only half an outline.

Bilbo ran one finger along the edge of the frame, studying his own awkward, uncomfortable and yet hopeful expression in the photograph. He was already beginning his doctorate when he attended his graduate ceremony, and had begged his parents not to bother coming, to just wait until he had finished properly. In a way, he had felt undeserving of their pride. He’d turned his attention towards that loftier goal of his doctorate and the future in academia that was sure to come afterwards, the decades of lecturing eager young students, grading examination papers, holding reading groups and writing hefty textbooks. He couldn’t see any other possible future.

A loud hissing broke Bilbo from his stupor. The potatoes! He thrust the photograph back on the dresser and ran to the kitchen, where the pot was boiling over in the element, throwing clouds of steam in the air. Bilbo rescued the potatoes and put his sausages in the pan, staring, as he knew he would when he returned, at his brown folio case on the spare chair.

After dinner, Bilbo made a cup of tea and finally brought himself to pull out the letter. He turned it over in his hands and studied the writing of his name, Bilbo Baggins, on the front. It was a smooth, creamy paper, with a governmental seal in the corner. Thorin Oakenshield’s writing, if it really was his, was small, neat, square and unmistakeably dwarvish. Bilbo found his letter-opener underneath a pile of papers on his desk and carefully eased it open, one leg folded beneath him, the other swinging a little, toes inches from the floor.

_Mr Bilbo Baggins,_

_I have been informed of your considerable expertise in the field of ancient Khuzdul by my colleague Balin Longbeard, and I believe that you are a viable candidate to accompany my archaeological team as a historical and linguistic consultant in an excavation in the foothills of Mt Erebor. The excavation is scheduled to take approximately six weeks, during which you will remain entirely on site. This excavation is extremely sensitive and in the interests of confidentiality, you will not be permitted to use the telegraph or telephone, and I will read and approve all incoming and outgoing written correspondence._

_Total remuneration is dependent on the quality and value of the excavation, but I promise as a minimum fee, you shall receive five hundred pounds for your efforts and cooperation. Full board and food will be included. You will be permitted to use facsimiles of any findings for use of academic publication if you choose to do so, and will have control over all publicity regarding your involvement with this operation._

_Regards,_

_The Hon. Thorin Oakenshield_

Bilbo felt a little deflated as he read the letter, remembering Balin’s passion in his office that afternoon. Thorin’s message seemed flat and sterile in comparison, brusque in tone and all too short. It was a careful letter, revealing only the bare facts and nothing more. Bilbo read it again, a pinprick of excitement piercing his initial disappointment. Although Bilbo was quite well-off (his parents’ estate netted him a comfortable living, particularly the lease on Bag End) he, like anybody else, could always do with a little more, and five hundred pounds was certainly more than a little. Publishing anything again, of course, was entirely out of the question and Bilbo refused for a moment to entertain the ridiculous idea. Publicity, that was a concept entirely foreign to Bilbo, one that sent a rather odd shiver down his spine. He led the most private sort of life he could imagine one living. And there was something... ominous about the entire ordeal. Why would Thorin Oakenshield want to read his letters?

No, in all it was exactly the opposite of everything Bilbo had worked for and stood for. He had worked too hard to drop it all and go traipsing off on some madcap excavation on a distant mountain for a treasure he wasn’t even sure existed at all. He resolved to thank Balin for the kind offer but decline.

Bilbo read a novel for a while in his favourite parlour chair by the fire, going over the same paragraphs again and again but taking nothing in. He’d left the letter on the kitchen table, a white corner visible through the open door, like a shard of china in the corner of his eye. At about ten o’clock, Bilbo gave up and let the book fall closed in his lap, staring down at his hairy feet in the low light of his electric lamp. The vision of those beautiful treasures flashed again in his mind, grimy and dim in Balin’s grainy photos. He’d never seen pieces so whole and finely-carved, not even when he visited the old ruins of Moria one summer with his professor and two classmates. It was so striking and singular to see them and it was _almost_ enough to indulge Bilbo’s wild delusions. He dared to imagine, warm and comfortable in his fireside armchair, coming across gold rings and arm-bands, axe-handles, remnants of sophisticated machinery, the imprint of an ancient city lost for millennia beneath the rock. Erebor was _real_ , it had existed at some point in history or in myth. Dwarves and men and orcs and elves had all written about it with various degrees of reverence and disdain. There was a seed of truth in the legend. Was Erebor truly the heart of a mighty dwarven empire, or was it nothing more than the squatting-place of half-wild savages? And if it were true, if there were secrets that would shake the history of Middle-Earth to its core, and if Bilbo were to uncover them...

No. His eyes flew open, and Bilbo realised that he’d been fantasising for far too long. He shook his head, in a stupor, and with a clumsy sleepiness went around switching off all the lights, brushed his teeth, changed into his pajamas and curled up in bed, listening to the gentle tick of his clock. He was going to tell Balin that he was staying here in Hobbiton where he belonged and the dwarves would have to look elsewhere for their expert. Bilbo lay on his side with half-open eyes. Through his hastily-drawn curtains, a finger of orange light brushed his dresser, the silvered frame of his graduation photograph gleaming as though made of solid gold.

* * *

He slept badly. Bilbo tossed and turned, stared at the ceiling and watched the clock tick from one to two to three and four, unsure if the vivid flashes in his mind were dreams or half-baked fantasies. He dreamed of gold and fire, of gleaming dragon-eyes that burned as hot as coals.

Near dawn, Bilbo accepted defeat and rose from his bed. He found his dressing-gown and opened the casement of his bedroom window, leaning into the street. The windowbox of begonias were in bloom and he breathed in the pleasant scent, looking out at the whitish, pale dawn. It was utterly silent, aside from the chirping of handful of birds. Bilbo leaned on his hands and felt a cool, gentle wind brush his tousled hair back from his face. Hobbiton had only been his home by proxy, a refuge that had sheltered him in his humiliation and failure, who quietly accepted Bilbo as one does a runaway child who has come home after an afternoon in the paddocks with scraped knees and an empty belly. Bilbo had become perfectly happy with his lot in life after all the hurt and shame and disappointment, happy to be somewhat pedestrian, to be seen as slightly eccentric, to be liked, if not loved, by his gentle townsfolk. He was happy to be known as secretary of the Historic Preservation Trust, treasurer of the Rose Society and (acting) vice-president of the Bookseller’s Association. Bilbo had spent a long time, far too long, rebuilding his life of humble mediocrity after his dazzling academic future had been cut down so savagely as a youth of twenty-four.

But what was it all for? An untidy flat stuffed with too many books? A name that appeared on a small handful of notice boards, prefect rolls and newsletters? Was this really what Bilbo Baggins, top of his class at Upton, and first-class honours at Rivendell, going to do with his life?

That damned letter had brought everything up again. Bilbo retreated and made his way through to his study, blundering in the dark. He turned on his desk lamp and opened up the storage closet, staring at the faded suitcase pushed rather hastily in the back behind file boxes of bills and statements of accounts and minutes and tax notices and all the other things he would give to an accountant if he could afford it. Bilbo heaved the suitcase out and carried it, puffing a little, into the parlour. The combination, his mother’s birthday, was easy to remember and the lid creaked open with a dull, musty smell. At the top was his degree, still in the frame his father gave him. Bilbo set it aside and turned his attention to the fistfuls of exercise books, loose sheets of notes, manuscript facsimiles and photographs of artefacts that twenty years ago was his entire world.

He rested on his heels, turning over the photographs slowly, reading through hurried notes in his thin, spidery rendition of a scholar’s script. Bilbo smiled, as though he was perusing old letters from a dear friend that now lived abroad. It was a snapshot of his former life, the hopes and dreams, the optimism, the surety that he would uncover something long since lost and forgotten. The smile faded and Bilbo found himself frowning down at a page of notes he had taken from Pizgal’s third edition of Ancient Orcish. _The cry,_ ‘ _shatûp dur-gazat_ _’_ _appears as early as the Second Age..._ in brackets, underlined, Bilbo had written _gazat=khazad? Must be a phonetic respelling._ He set the paper back in its dusty nest. Through his open bedroom window, Bilbo heard the distant clatter of the milkman’s cart on the cobblestones.

There was a surge in his chest, something akin to love or lust, a feeling which was so foreign to him that he couldn’t place it. It seemed as though it had been so long since he’d felt anything at all. He slumbered through life, a series of motions that seemed to have no thought or heart behind it, and Balin’s visit was an awakening. Dropping everything on a whim and rushing out into the unknown was the most _un-_ Bilboish thing that he could have ever imagined himself doing, and yet as he knelt down on the ground before the faded scraps of his former greatness, Bilbo wanted to do nothing more than to walk out that front door and just start running, running for miles and miles, forever, and not once would he look back.

He locked the suitcase and replaced it in the back of his closet. Bilbo flicked on the kettle and paced, tearing his fingers through his hair until it stood on end. There were still two hours to fuddle away, to back out from this and insist that no, he was _not_ going with Balin Longbeard on some ridiculous mission to a long-forgotten mountaintop graveyard. He didn’t want to do. He _didn’t._ Bilbo was perfectly happy here with his books and clubs and societies. He didn’t need anything else.

Bilbo’s hands shook as he poured his tea, slopping hot water all over the counter. He mopped it up and drank at the kitchen table, taking long draughts until his head swam and face grew red from the rapid heat. The drink emboldened him, but not in the way he wanted it to. He stared down at the letter, at Thorin Oakenshield’s neat, compact handwriting and felt that pressure in his stomach, that ache, grow and grow until he thought he was going to be sick.

Packed neatly away in the corner of his wardrobe was his trunk. Bilbo dragged it into the middle of his modest bedroom and started piling clothes in stacks on his bed. Shirts, undershirts, breeches, waistcoats, underpants, a couple of spare suspenders, a scarf (who knew how cold it would be up in the mountaintops?), woollen thermals, his spare jacket, a little worn now with patches on the elbows, his good suit in case he ever needed to go out, his comb, toothbrush and toiletries, medicines for stomach sickness and colds, a thick woven blanket and a pillow, a walking-stick, a deck of cards, a chess set, a photo of his mother, a fistful of notebooks, his travel typewriter in its smart leather case and lots and lots of books. Bilbo had to sit on the trunk to get the fastenings closed and stood wiping his brow, resolving to get the thing down the stairs before he lost his nerve. Bilbo didn’t even try to lift the trunk. Instead, he alternated between throwing his weight against it and dragging it with all of his might, moving in slow, sweaty inches as the east-facing bedroom slowly filled with sunshine.

Panting, Bilbo found himself at the head of the stairs. He pushed the trunk slowly, until it teetered over the edge, and then gave a final little shove. The trunk banged and Bilbo held on grimly, teeth rattling in his skull as he was pulled down to the landing. Bilbo slumped over the trunk and sighed, pushing back the hair plastered against his forehead as he examined the second flight of stairs. At the end, Bilbo’s arms were weak and trembling. He leaned against the front door and reached into his pocket for keys. Only then did he realise that although he was (somewhat hastily) packed for his long journey, Bilbo still wore his nightclothes.

Cursing his foolishness, Bilbo abandoned his trunk and ran up the stairs. He knew he looked a sight, red-faced and panting, with his dressing-gown undone. At least Mr Underby downstairs hadn’t peeped at him through his door as he banged and rattled past. Bilbo dressed as quickly as he could in yesterday’s clothes (everything else was already packed) and darted around the flat picking up all the odds and ends he’d forgotten – the letter from Thorin, the novel he’d been trying to read last night, his keys, a few spare buttons for his waistcoats and a packet of biscuits for the long train. Bilbo saw sense enough to ring for a taxi, breathlessly giving the operator his address as he pressed his hat over his sweat-slicked hair.

It was eight-thirty by this point. Bilbo waited outside, perched on his trunk, as Hobbiton began it slow awakening, like a sunny Sunday morning after a late night reading, lying in bed until the desire for tea and crumpets outweighed the soft cosiness of one’s feather quilt. Yawning shopkeeper’s waved in greeting, casting his trunk odd looks. “Off somewhere, Bilbo?” Bilbo just smiled back and gave short, evasive answers.

The taxi-driver, a burly young fellow with exceptionally hairy feet, helped Bilbo get the trunk in the back and drove him the short distance to the bookshop. Bilbo doubled the fare and left his luggage outside, dashing in and writing a long note to Marigold; he was leaving at very short notice for approximately six weeks, there was no phone number or forwarding address as of yet, but he would send that along as soon as possible. He told her to keep taking in orders as normal, pointed out his book of names and numbers with buyers and sellers according to genre, and to leave the accounts for him to balance upon return. Bilbo assured her that she would do well in his absence. He dashed this all off as quickly as possible and left it on the counter, giving his back office one last once-over, seizing a couple of books that looked promising, and locked the shop door behind himself.

Balin was already waiting for him, his suitcase at his feet, pretending to read a copy of the morning paper but really eyeing the hobbit’s large trunk. His own taxi idled behind, the driver staring boredly out the window. The dwarf looked up and flashed Bilbo a wide smile, crinkling in the corners of his eyes and showing his brittle, aged teeth.

Bilbo gulped. “So...” He gestured at his trunk somewhat awkwardly, still feeling out of breath even though he had long stopped rushing. His head was still spinning and spinning, madly, trying to make sense of the madness he had flung himself into.

Balin held out his hand. “Bilbo Baggins, it is a pleasure. I assure you, you will not regret this.”

Bilbo shook his hand, feeling none of that confidence. He felt, in fact, with a strange, niggling sort of grumble in his stomach, that he’d just made the most catastrophic decision of his life.


	3. Chapter 3

After negotiating Bilbo’s luggage, they made their way to the station, where Balin bought him a second-class return trip to Olvath, the elvish capital in the Kingdom of Rhovanion in the eastern boundaries of Eryn Lasgalen. The conductor on board tore his ticket in half and Bilbo carefully stowed the return stub away in his wallet. Across from him, Balin handed back his slip of paper and smiled at the hobbit, the lines deep around his tired eyes.

“I do hope you’re ready, Mr Baggins. This is going to be quite an eventful six weeks.”

Bilbo swallowed hard, wondering if he looked as sick as he felt. “Please, call me Bilbo.”

The train ride was long and quiet. Bilbo sat opposite from the elderly dwarf with his book open in his lap, turning the pages every often to give the pretence of reading, or he stared out the window. Balin spent most of the journey snoozing, his chin drooping forward against his chest. Bilbo visited the dinner car four times; a late breakfast of eggs and bacon (Bilbo was half an hour short of missing his first meal in twenty years, and had double helpings of bacon to calm his nerves), scones with strawberry jam and lashings of cream for morning tea, a lunch of chicken pie and asparagus, and, after he got peckish in the afternoon, a slice of lemon cake and a biscuit.

After half a dozen stops between Hobbiton and Rivendell (where Bilbo kept his face well-hidden in his newspaper), the train rumbled through the Misty Mountains, a tunnel of darkness that lasted for nearly an hour. Going through the mountains seemed to Bilbo like breaking through a barrier. He was officially further east than he’d ever been before as they passed into the other side, and Bilbo stared out at a world that was utterly foreign to him. Balin snored gently, utterly unperturbed at the jolting of the train, and Bilbo pressed one hand against the glass, staring at the mountains which crowned the landscape grow smaller and more distant. Home was truly behind him now. Bilbo opened his wallet and pulled out the ticket stub. _Western Railroad Company_ , _Second Class, Olvath to Hobbiton_. He read the tiny text over and over until it no longer made sense. No matter what happened, he rationalised with himself, he had his ticket home.

Eryn Lasgalen, or the Forest of Greenleaves, was for the most part its own tunnel through the thick woods. Bilbo napped, like Balin did with his chin on his chest, as the light softened. It was like being encapsulated inside an emerald. Afternoon waned into early evening, and the sun started to sink into the west. The closer they came, the more Bilbo found himself pulling out his wallet and looking at that little ticket stub. He could go back whenever he wanted. He could stand on the platform and get right back on the next train west if he wished and nobody would stop him. Early this morning, Bilbo wanted nothing more than to run away from Hobbiton forever, but now he felt as though there was no place in the world more suited to him. He cursed his fickle heart in the jumping carriage.

Like clockwork, Balin woke up with a yawn and a stretch Olvath came into view from the distance. It was a quarter to six when the train pulled in to the station, and a trickle of sweat ran from underneath Bilbo’s ear along his neck. He wiped at it with his handkerchief and stood up, putting on a pale smile. “Well, I suppose we should get a move on then.” He gathered up his case and his coat and his hat, trying his best not to look ill.

“Don’t worry.” He obviously wasn’t as good at hiding it as he thought. Balin easily lifted Bilbo’s large trunk, and Bilbo carried Balin’s modest suitcase. “You’ll only be meeting Thorin and Kili tonight.”

“Kili?” They stepped onto the platform.

“Yes, Thorin’s youngest nephew. He’s… well, he’s a handful, but he means well. We thought it best to have a simple dinner at home tonight and discuss the conditions before you put your name to paper.”

Bilbo’s stomach tightened. “There’s a contract?”

“Well, given the nature of what we’re undertaking, it’s only sensible.” Balin led the way into the massive station. All around them were men, a few elves and orcs, and the odd dwarf, all to-ing and fro-ing on the platform and looking in quite a hurry. Bilbo closely followed his companion, holding the suitcase close. The laughter of children rose to the vaulted ceiling, and the air was filled with the clatter of boots on the polished tiles. Balin walked with a sturdy matter-of-factness, despite Bilbo’s trunk, looking only ahead.

When they were on the steps, Bilbo turned back and stared up at the massive red-brick building, gaping. “It’s simply massive.” He turned back to Balin. “It must be the biggest in the north, surely.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt.” Balin made his way down to the pavement, hailing a taxi. Across the road was a large hotel with a restaurant on the bottom floor, a movie theatre, a department store, and a bistro. It was metropolitan and elegant, lit up with dazzling lights and stretching at least six storeys up. The street was packed with jostling people, and in the rush, Bilbo almost lost Balin waving by a parked taxi with a grin.

“Have you never been to Olvath before, Bilbo?” Balin stowed Bilbo’s trunk and his own suitcase in the boot, politely opening the door for the hobbit.

“No, I’ve never really been anywhere bigger than the Grey Havens.” Bilbo admitted as the taxi roared to life. “Hobbiton is—well, you’ve seen it, and Rivendell is more of a university town. They’re the only places I’ve lived in since grammar school, and I’m not much of a tourist.”

“It’s certainly a sight.” The taxi nipped along an upmarket street clustered with boutique stores and tiny cafes, rows of tidy cherry trees planted along the edge of the pavement. “We don’t see much of it where we live in the southern suburbs. It’s an hour by rail to Thorin’s house and I live quite nearby.”

“Oh, this must be costing a fortune, then.” Bilbo reddened. “We could have just taken the commuter train, we were right at the station.”

“Nonsense, you’re a business guest. Thorin has expenditure accounts for these sorts of goings-on.” The taxi, driven by a silent orc in a crisp blue uniform, turned onto a broader street that fed directly into the motorway system. “Yes, Rock Hill, that’s us.” Balin pointed out the sign for the exit and settled in. “Thorin lives with his nephew in a darling little townhouse near the railway station, insists on living amongst his constituents. He takes the train in and out every day, you know. Doesn’t even own a motorcar.”

“One would find it hard to adopt a life of luxury when representing such an impoverished people.” Bilbo murmured thoughtlessly, staring out the window. He realised his blunder too late, and burned with embarrassment. “I mean—”

“We _are_ impoverished. Do you know how much the average dwarf earns compared to men and elves in Olvath?” Bilbo shook his head. “Just fourty-four per cent. That’s less than half. Thorin was trying to get legislation through to enforce a minimum wage for dwarf employees, but it was outvoted on the grounds of discrimination.” He sighed. “But it’s not discrimination for a dwarf to be paid half of what a man would for doing the same job.”

“It must be so frustrating for him.” Bilbo said. “He’s still so powerless without more of the government on his side - but it sounds like it’s all a mess at the moment.” He had rifled through the newspaper in the afternoon, and read an article about the division in the House that had stopped legislation from passing for several weeks now and King Thranduil was on record saying he would prorogue parliament if a concession wasn’t reached by the end of next month.

“It’s always a mess.” Balin sighed, his eyelids drooping again. “Even when the journalists run out of scandal to report, there’s always something going on that they don’t know about. One year of working in parliament can take ten years off your life, I assure you.” Bilbo fiddled with the brim of his hat.

Once off the motorway, Balin gave the driver directions. Bilbo kept his nose very nearly plastered to the glass as they drove past. The first thing he noticed was how much _smaller_ the terraced houses were compared to the imposing buildings of the city. The pavement was cracked and in places crumbling away, and the taxi was jolted several times by nasty potholes in the road. A few shop windows had bars in front of them. They were loan officers, pawnbrokers, junk shops, dingy pubs, discount grocers, rental companies, second-hand furniture stores, questionable bookstores, newsagents and bookies. Bilbo shivered and turned away from the window, already missing Hobbiton.

The taxi turned down a side street. Two blocks in, he pulled up outside a plain-looking terraced house with no front yard or fence with a freshly-painted red door. Bilbo got out and waited while Balin paid the driver, hands in his pockets. A dam with a buggy and two small dwarrows were walking past. He nodded and smiled, but the mother was chilly and withdrawn. Bilbo heard a distinctive _look at his feet!_ from the little boy, who received a clip about the ears and a scolding in response.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.” Balin set down Bilbo’s trunk and unlocked the front door. “I’ll put on a spot of tea and see if there’s any bread and butter.” Balin pushed his way inside and Bilbo followed. It was a small, rather dim entranceway with two doors going off it and a narrow staircase, and furnished quite sparsely with a coat-rack, a hall table pile with bills and letters, and a stiff-looking potted plant. From one of the rooms a telephone was ringing. “Oh, blast!” Balin pushed past him. “Coming! Kili, are you not home yet? You promised you would be back!” Bilbo followed Balin into a tidy little sitting room. There was a television set in the corner and a clean-looking, if faded, suite of two armchairs and a couch. A large bookcase stood against one wall, crammed with titles that Bilbo instantly approved of. There was a wireless on a smart oak table beneath the window and a small china cabinet full of knick-knacks, painted figurines and gilded teacups beside the door. Photographs hung all over the walls and were lined in haphazard rows on the cabinet. Balin was standing at a telephone table with a spindly seat by the radiator, breathless.

“Hello, Balin Longbeard speaking. You’ve reached Thorin Oakenshield’s house. I’m afraid he’s not av— Kili?” Balin sat down at that. “Durin’s beard, where are you? You promised to be— _what?_ When did this happen?” Bilbo hovered uncomfortably in the doorway. “You stupid, _foolish_ boy!” Baling shouted, and Bilbo shoved his hands in his pockets, pretending to be very interested in a tea set locked behind the dusty glass in the china cabinet. “What am I going to tell Thorin? You do realise our expert is here, don’t you? We were going to leave tomorrow and you— all right, all right, calm down… Of course I’m coming to get you, you dolt. Which station?... OK. Yes, yes, I’m on my way now.” Balin heaved a long sigh as he put down the receiver.

“Well,” he stood up, clearing his throat. “That was, er, Kili. He’s got himself into a spot of bother, and he needs me to go and get him. I shan’t be long, perhaps two or three hours.” Balin looked very apologetic. “Thorin shall be here quite shortly, but in the meantime, I’m afraid you’re going to have to amuse yourself. Feel free to listen to some music or watch the television and make yourself a cup of tea. You’re a very welcome guest, Mr Baggins. I just wish there was somebody to host you properly.”

“No, no, not a trifle.” Bilbo took one of his hands out of his pockets, flapping him away in an awkward sort of gesture. “It sounds like it’s quite serious.”

“Oh, it’s just Kili being Kili.” Balin sighed, dashing off a note to Thorin on a small pad by the telephone. “Again, I’m very sorry. Please, make yourself at home. I’ve left a note for Thorin, if you could direct him to it.”

“No trouble at all. I’ll see you soon.” And then Balin was gone, leaving Bilbo all alone in this strange house. It was certainly a turn of events Bilbo was not expecting. He stood in the centre of the sitting room with his hands back in his pockets, toying with the corner of his wallet. Out of curiosity, he approached the photographs on the opposite wall. They were all black and white, strong and severe portraits. Mothers sat stiffly with solemn children on their laps, fathers with their hands on their son’s shoulders, twin expressions of emotionless restraint. Bilbo couldn’t tell from any of these pictures who was Thorin, or indeed, the mysterious Fili and Kili. Over the china cabinet, he finally saw three photographs that gave a clue. They were military portraits, two black and white, one coloured. Three young soldiers in uniform, with the regulation short back and sides and bare faces. Bilbo recognised Thorin in the middle, with that familiar beaky nose and piercing eyes that he’d seen in newspapers occasionally, blurry and distant. He looked so, _so_ much younger without his familiar thick, if close-cropped, beard and single waist-length braid of hair that he sported in parliament. He was sharp, cutting, introspective, so much more striking in this beardless close-up, and Bilbo found himself staring far longer than even the most relaxed observer would consider appropriate.

He could feel the disapproving eyes of Thorin’s family on his back, so Bilbo turned his attention to the other photographs. The one on the left looked as though it could be Thorin’s relation, with a similar, albeit softened, nose and gaze, and the same shade of blue in his eyes, the same dark hair. Perhaps it was a brother. These nephews of Thorin had to come from somewhere, after all. The final, coloured, photograph had a sharpness to it that didn’t come from any tinting, and Bilbo assumed it was obviously very recent. It was a blonde with the nose and jaw that Bilbo now took to be hereditary, and he wondered if it was Fili or Kili. After what Balin had said, something told him that it was probably the former.

He turned on the television, but it was only the news bulletin going over the top stories of the day – the latest in the ongoing saga of the unsettled House, a train derailing in the mountains of Ered Mithrin, a quarterly report about the Rhovanion economy. After that, it delved into sports. Bilbo waited to hear the end-of-day report in the ongoing test between old rivals Rohan and Gondor (Gondor trailing by a hundred and sixty in the second innings on day four with just four wickets to spare) before switching off, flopping down on the couch with a bored sigh. The wireless would have just been the same at this time of night, and after being stuck on the train since nine in the morning, the last Bilbo wanted to do was sit about and read.

With a soft patter against the polished floorboards, Bilbo made his way into the kitchen. It was quite old-fashioned, but Thorin had an electric oven and a refrigerator nestled in the old cabinetry and counters. A sturdy table with five mismatched chairs took up half of the little kitchen, covered with a simple, coarse linen tablecloth. Bilbo admired the oven, obviously quite new and an expense he may finally be able to justify when he returned to his flat in the Shire with his five hundred pounds. There wasn’t much in here to interest him; it was homely and warm enough, just impersonal, and Bilbo found himself quite soon making his way up the narrow staircase to where he assumed the bedrooms would be. The only bathroom in the house was upstairs, quite spacious and clean. Both bedroom doors were closed and Bilbo paused with his hand on the knob, questioning for the first time if this was _really_ such a good idea. Balin had said make himself at home, but he didn’t mean to go snooping.

But Bilbo did feel dreadfully on the back foot in the midst of all of this. Balin seemed to know quite a lot about him and his past (although, thankfully, not _everything_ ) and these people were all strangers to him – strangers he would soon be living in very close quarters with for six uncertain weeks. Emboldened and assured in his isolation, Bilbo opened the door.

“Oh.” It was a surprise. Instantly, Bilbo knew that this must be Fili-and-Kili’s room. There were two narrow iron bedsteads against each wall with a desk in the middle serving as two bedside tables. It contained a lamp on each end, a portable record player and stacks of LPs, a handful of garish magazines and comic books, postcards from what looked like the east and several adventure paperbacks, mostly to the left but starting to creep across to right-hand territory. A chest of drawers was pushed up against the wall, filled with a similar sort of left-right spreading clutter; a comb, several different jars of waxes and tonics, shoe polish, more postcards, and a couple of photographs in cheap plastic frames. Although both beds had the same white sheets and dark blue bedspreads, the one on the right was immaculate, with hospital corners, the pillows exactly centre and fluffed just so. The left bed was unmade, with a shirt thrown haphazardly over it, and the floor on the left side littered with gum wrappers and socks. The walls on the right side had just a single map of Middle-Earth and a calendar, six months out of date, but the left was a bright mish-mash of posters of films, sports stars and musicians, pictures cut out of magazines, and photographs that looked like they came from fairground booths. It was such a striking parallel between the organised and the chaotic that Bilbo found himself giggling quite rudely.

He left in silence, afraid to touch anything and disturb Kili’s (for _surely_ it was Kili’s) mess and clutter. Bilbo closed the door behind him and made his way into the last remaining door in the little hallway – Thorin’s room. He found his heart beating just a little bit faster in anticipation as he turned the knob, wondering just what this room would reveal about Thorin Oakenshield, decorated veteran from the Forodwaith Wars, activist turned MP and one of the most exciting and divisive political figures of this century.

Initially, he was disappointed. It was a simple, clean room with nothing to reveal. A bed, a chair with a dressing-gown draped over it, a roll-top writing desk in the corner covered in loose papers (and even someone was curious as Bilbo Baggins knew not to go poking about into _that_ ), drawers with a mirror, a rather battered wardrobe. The door hung open, showing a row of expensive, smart-looking suites in dark blues and greys. The drawers, well-kept as they were, had things like a beard trimmer and moustache wax, night cream, cologne, cufflinks and tie clips that Bilbo knew would have cost a week’s wages for the average working man. But the longer Bilbo looked, the more he saw beyond its impersonal tidiness. It was an uneasy balance between kinship with the impoverished lower classes that Thorin represented, and the elite world of privilege and luxury which he had to associate with and impress.

The only thing that stood out as immediately personal was a photograph on his bedside table in a nice silvered frame next to a lamp, the latest novel by literary sensation Argus Milven, and a small alarm clock. It was a photograph of Thorin and his probably-brother in combat, sitting side-by side on a large piece of rubble in the sunshine. Their rifles were propped up against their legs, jackets and helmets in a crumbled mess on the ground. The probably-brother wore a grubby singlet, but Thorin himself was bare-chested, face turned to the side and looking a little abashed. As he took the details in, Bilbo found his knees were rapidly going weak, and he sank onto the edge of the well-kept bed. The dwarf was almost impossibly broad, muscles thick and swollen beneath his skin. Bilbo stared at Thorin’s torso, his arms, the ridge of his collarbone, all flawlessly defined. His toes curled. Thorin’s chest was covered in whorls of dark hair that trailed down to his belly and further, his thick forearms dusted with the same coarse hair that vanished slightly above his elbows.

Thorin was _gorgeous._ Of course, Bilbo had seen other males bodies before in his risky and secret trysts. He had even once furtively purchased an extremely lewd photograph in his university days and kept it between the pages of his book on Elvish lyrics for six months before he grew paranoid and burned it in the fire. But for all that, he’d never seen someone so barrel-chested and stocky and _hairy_ and powerful… Bilbo’s mouth was dry. He screamed at himself to put the blasted thing down and leave it all alone, that it was disgusting. He was lusting after a bloody politician, sneaking a look at his personal photographs! To do it to anybody was perverted and rude enough, but somebody like Thorin Oakenshield…

From the doorway came a very distinctive _ahem_ of an affronted, respectable sounding fellow trying to catch Bilbo’s attention with as much tact as possible. Bilbo squeaked at the sound and jumped up, awkwardly setting the photograph back on the bedside table (where it fell face-down) and turning to meet his intruder.

Thorin Oakenshield stood with his arms folded and legs slightly apart. He had a look of mild discomfort on his face, like somebody who had been in a doctor’s waiting room for hours and hours and was told he still had a while to wait, one eyebrow slightly arched. He wore an immaculately tailored pinstriped suit, his tie already loosened like a clerk who had come home after a long day. Bilbo lost his breath and felt his face, already pink from the excitement of examining the photograph, flush a very deep red. If Thorin was striking in his military photographs, then in person he was beyond compare. Age had sharpened his features, elongated his nose and made him look heavy and broody. His eyes, more lined now, were as bright and piercing as ever, and the temples of his braided hair were streaked with grey.

He was the most handsome being Bilbo had ever met.

A strangled sort of noise sounded in Bilbo’s throat and he felt humiliation swallow him up in one big gulp. He opened his mouth to speak, to apologise, to beg to be allowed to stay, to throw himself on his knees and utter the most passionate verses of love-poetry in any of the four language he knew. Bilbo was speechless, and in his heart, pounding against his quivering ribcage fit to burst, he could feel himself falling, gracelessly and instantaneously, more deeply in love than he could ever imagine being in his subdued, quiet little life, and they still had not said a single word to one another.

“I—” Bilbo coughed, breathing very heavily through his open mouth in a fluster that he hoped with every fibre of his body Thorin would interpret as embarrassment. “M-Mr Thorin Oakenshield.” He wiped his sweaty palms on his waistcoat and held out hand. “I’m Mr Bilbo Baggins. I-It is a-an honour and a pleasure to finally meet you.”


	4. Chapter 4

Thorin remained very still, hands folded across his chest. “What are you doing in my room?” Bilbo’s poor, tortured heart skipped a beat at the words, hearing Thorin’s real voice for the first, not thin and warbled from static as he’d several times heard before. Every word, every rich, heavy, sensuous syllable struck Bilbo from his crown to the tips of his hairy toes, dark as pitch and sweet as honey.

“I, um— I was, just… looking for the... lavatory.” Bilbo stuttered lamely, feeling Thorin tear shreds of his skin with those startlingly blue eyes, quick and sharp as the crack of a whip.

“In my room?” Bilbo bit his lip and finally lowered his hand, rocking on the balls of his feet he withered in embarrassment.

“Well, yes— I-I suppose I should have just turned— no, I don’t suppose. I shouldn’t have come in. I’m very, very sorry Mr Oakenshield.” He stammered, feeling a bead of sweat trickle on his temple. He caught his reflection in the mirror and saw he was the colour of the Gaffer’s prized red tomatoes.

Thorin stared at him for another few moments and Bilbo grew, if possible, even more nervous under that scrutinising gaze. Finally, he made a little huff in his throat and stepped aside. “I want to change. Please wait for me downstairs.”

“Yes, of course. I won’t come in here again, _ever_.” Bilbo pushed past him, thrusting his hands deep in his pockets so Thorin couldn’t see how badly they were shaking. Without another word, Thorin closed the door behind him, firmly, leaving Bilbo to himself in the hall.

He splashed water on his face to try and combat the flush, moaning loudly into a hand towel. Bilbo was beyond embarrassed as he lowered the towel and examined himself in the bathroom mirror, a few damp curls plastered to his face. “Bilbo Baggins, you _fool._ ” He whispered trying to get a hold of himself. “Well, you’ve done it now and no mistake. He’s not going to have a _pervert_ and a sneak in his company. You’ll be on the train home first thing after that and it’s back to the bookstore for you.” He ached with disappointment at himself, a crushing defeat edging in on his humiliation.

Bilbo waited in the sitting room, his head bend and hands clasped together. A clock on the wall ticked painfully slowly, showing the time as nearly seven o’clock. Rapidly, he tried to come up with an apology, some sort of reasoning for what he had done, but Bilbo was drawing a muddled blank. All he could see when he closed his eyes was Thorin’s face, the arch of his brow, his brooding stare, the sharp definition of his jaw, the tiny protrusion of hair at the base of his throat by the loosened tie…

“Stop it!” He hissed, yanking at his hair as though he could pull those lascivious thoughts out of his head. Bilbo’s stomach had gone soft and buttery at the reimagining of Thorin’s face, and it was getting hard to breathe again. Bilbo wiped at his forehead with a handkerchief. The floorboards creaked in the hallway and he stood up very quickly, wringing the handkerchief in his hands.

“L-Look, I need to apologise again—” Bilbo gulped as Thorin entered the sitting room. He was in his shirtsleeves, rolled up to the elbow with the top two buttons undone. Bilbo caught a glimpse of his stout, hairy forearms, the dinnerplate hands that were well-worn and callused but still very clean, and drew in a deep breath through his nose. “I am very sorry. My curiosity got the better of me and for that, I deeply apologise. I am— _so_ embarrassed by this, and I promise it’s very out of character.”

“I would hope it is.” Thorin held him that captivating gaze, absorbing Bilbo but not giving a thing away himself. He paused for a second, looking Bilbo up and down and staring in particular at the handkerchief knotted in his hands. “Would you like a drink, Mr Baggins?”

“Beg pardon?” Bilbo squeaked.

“A drink. You look as though you could do with one.”

“W-Well, er, yes, thank you.” He chanced a tiny, self-conscious smile. “Thank you very much.”

“Come into the kitchen.” Bilbo followed him, thrusting the crumpled rag into his pocket and taking a seat at the table. “I only have whisky at the moment.”

“That’s fine. Good. Fantastic.” Thorin set the glasses down on the table and poured two finger’s worth in each. “Thank you.” Bilbo accepted it and had a big mouthful, forgetting in his fluter that he actually didn’t really like the taste of whiskey. “Mmm.” He forced down the urge to cough, feeling his throat burn. “Smooth.”

Thorin tilted his head back like a seasoned drinker and didn’t say anything. After he recovered, Bilbo took a smaller, more manageable sip, waiting for Thorin to say something, anything, to break this awful, stuffy silence.

Finally, something sprang to mind. “Did you see the message by the phone—”

“Yes, I am well aware.” There was an edge to his voice, and Bilbo saw best in his fuddle to leave it. They drank wordlessly, Bilbo staring at the walls, the countertops, the floor – anything _except_ Thorin Oakenshield himself. Thorin seemed very preoccupied with his drink and not overly keen to start a conversation with the hobbit he had just caught nosing about in his personal things.

After a time, Thorin drained his glass and looked at his watch. “Would you like some supper?”

“Yes please.” He _was_ starting to feel a little peckish again. It had been several hours since his afternoon tea, and his cake slice as rather small. Thorin stood up with a little grunt. “I can help—”

“Sit down.” Bilbo froze, half-out of his seat, and sat back down, looking down at his hands. He felt rather like a little boy again trapped in the headmaster’s office after being caught bunking off or writing naughty words in the lavatory walls, and was so painfully disappointed in himself that he was starting to feel sick. Thorin must have been thinking the absolute _worst_ of him now. It was surprising that he hadn’t thrown Bilbo out of his home already after what the nosey hobbit had done. He wanted so desperately to show that he wasn’t like that at all, that he was really respectable and polite and well-mannered, but before they had even met properly, Bilbo Baggins had already funked it.

Thorin got out a can of baked beans and turned on the electric oven. Bilbo watched him – or, to be more specific his hands – as he opened the can and poured it all into a little milk pan. From the pantry he fished out a loaf of bread, looking at Bilbo over his shoulder. “One slice or two?”

“Er, one will be plenty, thank you.” Bilbo sought refuge in his drink, wondering if Thorin had caught him staring. Most probably. He despaired in silence, wondering how far away Balin and the elusive Kili would be by now.

Thorin frowned down at the beans as he waited for the oven to heat up. “Balin tells me you were educated at Rivendell.”

“Yes, yes I was.” Bilbo smiled. At least Thorin had an inkling of an interest in him. “I studied Ancient languages and took up Khuzdul in my second year—”

“You didn’t finish your doctorate.” Thorin cut over the hobbit, not looking at him. Bilbo gulped, heart jumping in his chest.

“No, unfortunately. I had… some problems. I was about six months from submission but…” Bilbo’s nails were biting into his palms. “I had a nervous breakdown.” He rattled off the well-trained explanation, trying to sound as though it barely even bothered him anymore.

Thorin grunted. There was yet another awkward silence, Thorin stirring the beans and Bilbo drumming his fingers against the tabletop, trying to think of something to say.

“Mr Oakenshield, I—”

“Why do you call me that?” Bilbo stopped, breathless.

“I— Beg pardon?”

“You’re supposed to be an expert in dwarvish culture, no? You should know dwarves never use each other’s last names. They’re mostly just a meaningless formality so we fit in with elves and men.”

“Oh, yes, I am aware.” Bilbo cleared his throat. “I mean, you obviously gained your epithet in combat, but...” He trailed off as Thorin made no indication that he was even listening. “I was trying to be polite, I’m sorry… Thorin.” He tried the name out on his tongue, feeling a thrill in his chest.

“Only people in parliament call me Mr Oakenshield. Dwarves and friends call me Thorin.” He opened the oven door to check on the bread toasting beneath the grill. Bilbo held his breath. Did that mean… Did Thorin consider him…?

“So will I from now on.” With a silent nod, Thorin got out two small plates, buttered the toast and served their modest supper. “Thank you.”

They ate slowly. Bilbo asked several timid questions about Rock Hill, about Olvath and how things were going in parliament and Thorin gave stiff, polite answers. It was like a lunch between business acquaintances, or two people waiting for a mutual friend. Bilbo wished for a little salt, but was too nervous to ask. He could hear the clock tick from the sitting room, their forks occasionally squealing against the china.

“I would rather have Balin here to talk you through the contract, if you don’t mind.” Thorin cleared away the plates. Bilbo could see why, if Thorin was normally this reserved and unpenetrating. Thorin got his book down from his bedroom and read on one of the armchairs, keeping the wireless low on a classical station. Bilbo found a stack of the Gondor Review, an expensive and rather socialist magazine that discussed politics, economics and high culture, which he devoured in his university days and unfortunately had a very hard time getting hold of in the Shire. Thorin left the whisky bottle open on the coffee table and drank slowly, sometimes lifting his eyes from his novel and staring vacantly across the sitting room at the shadows on the wall.

“Is it good?” After half an hour of this silent leafing, Bilbo made yet another attempt at conversation.

Thorin jerked in his seat, as though the hobbit had pulled him out of a deep slumber. “What?”

“The novel, is it good?” Bilbo clarified, a little apologetic. “I mean – I like Argus Milven very much, but I think his recent work is a little flat. The Garden House was the last thing of his I really liked.”

“Oh.” Thorin blinked. “Yes, it is good.” He turned back to the book with a frustrating air of finality, and Bilbo fought the urge to sigh.

“What is it about?” Maybe he was being too desperate, asking these sorts of question. Perhaps Thorin was feeling attacked and interrogated by this nosy little halfling, and that was why he refused to answer his questions. He treated his words like currency, paying in pennies and keeping it hidden away.

“It’s set forty years ago in his childhood home off the coast of South Gondor. A young woman’s body is found on the rocks and the detectives are trying to figure out if it was murder or suicide.”

“Oh, I _love_ his provincial novels. There’s something about the villages and small towns that he just does so well.” Bilbo closed the magazine. “It borders on the parochial sometimes, but his depiction of the communal psyche is so nuanced and exquisite.”

Thorin’s lip twitched. “You _did_ study at Rivendell.” Bilbo’s face coloured, and he hid his face in the magazine, feeling a little abashed that Thorin’s insinuation. He wasn’t one of those pompous snobs who had their tastes dictated to him by the latest issue of whatever highbrow rag was in fashion. Wordlessly, Bilbo read an article about the automobile industry in Rohan with a determined intensity, the magazine raised almost up to his eye level, trying to shut Thorin out.

He nearly cried with relief as the door opened just before ten o’clock. Thorin delicately bookmarked the page and then shut the novel with an authoritative snap, draining his glass and waiting with his arms crossed for Balin and his nephew to slink apologetically into the sitting room. Sensing the brewing conflict, Bilbo kept his eyes firmly on the page, curled up on the couch and trying to remain invisible.

“Uncle!” The cheery voice made Bilbo lift his gaze. Kili stood in the doorway, an oddly lanky scrap of a dwarf with unbraided shoulder-length brown hair and a shadow of stubble. He was dressed in a leather biker's jacket and jeans, like a heartthrob in a film made for teenagers. Unlike the rest of his family, Kili's features were rounded and soft. Bilbo immediately liked him. “I heard that—"

"What were you doing, Kili?" The cheerful grin vanished. "Mahal, what were you thinking? Did they press any charges?" Behind Kili, Balin shook his head.

"There were about thirty of them at the station. A couple were being written up for assaulting a police officer, but Kili kept his hands to himself this time." Thorin sighed, shaking his head.

"What was it for this time? Union march? Picket line? Protest rally?" Kili remained silent, his expression now angry and defensive. “What if they had pressed charges? Do you want to be left behind tomorrow?"

Kili's dark eyes widened. "No! You know how important it is to me, Uncle. Look, I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

"How many times have I heard that before?" Bilbo kept his eyes firmly on his magazine. "You promised to be mature and level-headed, Kili. That was the rule."

"I was!" Kili begged. "I swear. I was just standing there and they thought I was causing trouble. It was as peaceful as anything. We weren't hurting anybody. The police just came and—"

"I don't want to hear it." Bilbo lifted his head for a quick peek. Thorin had his hand held up, cutting Kili off. "Go to bed."

Kili stood very still. "I'm still going, aren't I?"

"That remains to be seen." Thorin pointed towards the door. "Bed. _Now_." Kili withdrew, looking miserable. As soon as he left, Thorin slumped his shoulders in a long sigh. "That boy."

"He was right, though." Balin said. “It was a peaceful protest."

"Nothing is peaceful when police get themselves involved." He sat back down on the couch. "I'm sorry you had to see that, Mr Baggins."

"Hm? Oh, I was reading." Bilbo tried to sound breezy and careless.

"He reminds me of another certain obstinate dwarf in his younger days." Balin said pointedly, shrugging off his coat.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." Thorin poured himself another drink, clearly rattled. "Now, let's finally discuss the finer points of Mr Baggins' contract."

* * *

Near midnight, after Balin and Thorin patiently took him through the contract, Bilbo signed his name on the dotted line at the end of an eight-page document.  Thorin had maintain that same strict politeness throughout, to the point that even Balin was giving him odd looks from time to time, suggesting this standoffish behaviour was quite out of character. The revelation did little to soothe Bilbo’s growing nerves, and he found himself reaching far too often for the whisky, morose to think that Thorin obviously already disliked him. He drank until he felt relaxed and quite merry, and by the time Balin pushed a pen into his hand Bilbo signed with a rather giddy flourish, despite some misgivings about the details of several finer sub-clauses, allowing for the first time a tinge of excitement to colour his nerves.

He brushed teeth and changed into his pajamas. Thorin apologetically offered him Fili’s bed, saying it was only for one night and from tonight he would have his very own tent. Bilbo opened the door as quietly as he could, expecting the young dwarf to be asleep at this late hour.

“Mr Baggins, isn’t it?” Kili was sitting cross-legged on his unmade bed, reading one of his pulpy novels. “My uncle hasn’t bored you to death, then?”

“Kili.” Bilbo held out his hand. “It’s good to put a face to the name.” And the reputation too, although he didn’t say that. Kili jumped up and shook it enthusiastically, watching Bilbo carefully fold back the flawless bedspread. “Shouldn’t you have been asleep hours ago?”

“I was told to go to _bed_ , not to sleep.” Kili dog-eared the page of his paperback, much to Bilbo’s chagrin, tossing it on the desk. "I'm sorry about Uncle Thorin. He can be such a bore."

"Why were you arrested today, if you don't mind me asking?" Bilbo smoothed the covers over his lap, sitting up against the pillows.

"Oh, _that_." Kili rolled his eyes. “It was a march in solidarity with the miner's strikes up in the Grey Mountains. Perfectly legal, you know. The police had no right to break it up. They had shields and everything, ordered the crowd to disperse, but when we exercised our legal right to protest, they started rounding us up! Animals, the lot of 'em." He stood up and pulled his shirt over his head. "I'm so sick of those blasted bobbies thinking they can just step all over us.” Kili dropped his T-shirt carelessly on the floor. There were several nasty bruises purpling on his back and shoulders, an indication that Kili may have been dishonest about coming quietly, but Bilbo held his tongue. Kili was slimmer than his uncle underneath his clothes but just as hairy, Bilbo taking little peeks while trying to look as though he was staring at the mounds of his feet beneath the bedspread. But it wasn’t the same at all; there was no deep stirring of desire in his stomach, no shooting of electricity along his spine. Bilbo had already fallen for somebody else.

“Are you excited?” Kili kicked off jeans and crawled into bed in loose red boxer shorts, lying on his side with his head pillowed by one arm. He reminded Bilbo of his school days, of boys lying in rows and conspiring with one another through the darkness. “I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep.”

“Yes.” Bilbo’s head was starting to swim. He snuggled down under the clean sheets, staring up at the ceiling. “I am excited.”

* * *

In the morning, Bilbo awoke with a flash of panic, staring up at the slanted rafters as he temporarily forgot where he was. The mattress beneath him was hard and unfamiliar, the sheets a cheap, stiff weave of rayon. His head ached and his tongue was fuzzy.

Oh.

Yes.

Hm.

Humiliation rushed like an oncoming train. Kili snored in the bed next to him, half of his face crushed into his pillow and his hair strewn over his eyes. Bilbo lay on his back with his eyes closed, hoping to regain sleep, but his eager mind wasn’t having a bar of it, not after what was going to happen today.

He padded downstairs in his pajamas, finding Thorin at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of strong, black coffee that Bilbo could smell from the doorway and reading the morning paper. He was already dressed in a collared shirt and cream-coloured trousers, his hair unbraided, falling over his shoulders in thick, luxurious curls of jet-black, one lock falling over his face just _so_ in a way that Bilbo almost refused to believe was accidental. After several moments, Bilbo realised he had been staring again, completely absorbed. This time, at least, Thorin didn’t seem to have noticed his presence. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, pondering. “Er, good morning.” Bilbo tentatively ventured, watching the dwarf lower the page with a little grunt.

“Morning.” Thorin drained his cup. “Coffee?”

“Oh, no thank you. I take tea if anything.” Unsure if he was allowed to sit or not, Bilbo hovered, curling his hairy toes against the linoleum. The clock ticked away in the sitting room.

“Are you going to stand and watch me all morning or take some breakfast?” Thorin remarked, eyes back on his paper. Bilbo squeaked and jumped to attention. “There’s half a loaf in the breadbox and jam and marmalade in the cabinet next to the refrigerator. It’s not hobbit standards, but it’s better than you’ll get up the mountain, so make the most of it.”

Bilbo made himself four slices of toast with plum jam and ate it at the chair furthest from Thorin. He almost worked up the nerve to ask for the international section of the Post if Thorin was finished it, but his mettle failed him and instead Bilbo studied the faded floral wallpaper, trying to find the pattern. It was a mercy when Kili thumped down the stairs yesterday’s T-shirt over his boxer shorts, breaking the stiff silence.

“Morning, Uncle! Hi, Bilbo!” He was as sunny and warm as the clear morning outside, switching on the electric kettle rifling automatically through the bread box. Thorin made only a low rumble in his throat, eyes trained on an article about how the coal shortage was impacting transport prices. “Ooh, sorry.” Kili winked in Bilbo’s direction. “Uncle Thorin _hates_ it when you interrupt his morning paper-reading. He says it’s the only time he ever has to himself.”

“It was.” Thorin said curtly, laying down his newspaper. “And Kili, get dressed for goodness sake. We have a guest in the house.”

“Bilbo’ll see a lot more of us all soon. Coffee, Bilbo?” Kili looked over his shoulder.

“No, thank you. I’m a tea drinker.” Thorin lifted his newspaper again at that, looking, if Bilbo had any sort of handle on him yet (and he wasn’t at all sure that he did) a little guilty.

“Oh! We have teabags too. Give me a moment.” Kili rustled around. “Uncle, when’s Balin coming over? I haven’t even started packing yet.”

Thorin swung himself in his chair, folding his newspaper and laying it over his lip. Bibo saw the good sense to absorb himself in his toast crusts, staring down at his plate. “I haven’t said if you’re going yet.”

“Funny.” Kili put his bread inside the electric oven to toast and leaned against the counter. “Don’t even pretend. You want me up there so you can keep an eye on me.”

Bilbo looked up, half terrified and half curious at what Thorin’s response would be. The left corner of his lip flickered in what could for maybe a fraction of second be considered a smile, before he looked disapproving again. “I am serious, Kili.” His nephew straightened up. “No more games and silliness. This an _extremely_ important matter and I need you to give it the respect it deserves.”

“Hand on heart, Uncle. No more silly buggers.” Kili looked as sombre as a Temple priest at that, almost entirely believable except for the glint in his dark eyes.

* * *

Balin arrived around nine in a black Ashpar, a rugged, orcish-built truck built for the mountains with five modified seats and just enough boot space if they crammed everything in. Bilbo stood guiltily in the entraceway beside his trunk, one foot hidden behind the other.

“Ah, don't worry.” Balin sensed his embarrassment with a kindly smile. “Everybody else is already up there, pitching camp except us — oh, and Fili. He should be there by the weekend.” Kili dashed around, cramming as much as he could in a rather beaten suitcase that bore several peeling travel stickers. Thorin shouted at him to hurry up, and in response Kili shouted at him to be patient. He asked three times if he could follow on his motorcycle and each time Thorin refused.

“Do you have a motorcycle?” Bilbo snagged Kili in the sitting room hunting about under the couch.

“Mm-hm!” Bilbo only saw the lower half, jeans and worn boots, sticking out at an awkward angle like a praying mantis against the carpet. “A Mearas. She’s my pride and joy. Thorin _hates_ it when I go out riding, especially on the motorway, but seeing as I paid for it myself, there’s not much he can do.” Kili emerged with a rather battered science fiction paperback, the pulpy kind with scantily-clad women on the front and grotesque monsters looming over them. “I _knew_ I hid it here. Thorin never cleans.” He hit it in his jacket with a wink. “Don’t tell Uncle. It’s dead filthy and he’d burn it if he knew.”

“My lips are sealed.” Bilbo knew exactly what Kili meant — he had young hobbits on occasion come into the store and try their luck, rifling through his bargain bins, but Bilbo had a firm policy on that sort of rubbish; any such ‘novels’ unlucky enough to find their way into his hands were soon disposed of in the appropriate manner, sparing Hobbiton at large from such perverted influences. It was a given, of course, that the acting vice-president of the Bookseller’s Association would take such a responsible approach to the handling of obscene material.

Thorin drove and Balin sat beside him, Bilbo sat in the back, leaning against the window as the Ashpar flicked past the depressing clutter of grubby stores, turning onto the eastern motorway. There was a book on his lap, but Bilbo was sick of reading and sick of looking out at strange landscapes that had no meaning to him too. Kili nattered on and on about nothing, Balin indulged him as much as patience allowed, and Thorin kept very silent, invisible in Bilbo’s field of vision.

It used to take two days of hard marching to reach Erebor from Olvath — or what it was, back in times of legend. Today, they made the journey in two hours after passing into the open countryside, Kili keeping up his chatter the entire way. About twenty miles out from the foothills, Thorin turned off the east-bound motorway onto a gravel road, winding slowly through the rugged landscape of weathered boulders and tussock-grass. After half an hour, the road was obstructed by a boom gate locked with a thick, heavy chain. Kili unlocked the gate with a key Thorin gave him, waving cheerfully as they drove on through. Bilbo tried to ignore the six or seven warning plastered over the gate or stuck up on thick metal poles - ‘DANGER’, ‘VOLCANIC ACTIVITY’, ‘GRAVE OFFENCE’, ‘RESTRICTED AREA’, ‘TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.’

Balin looked over his shoulder at Bilbo, his blue eyes twinkling. “Are you ready, Mr Baggins?”

He’d told Balin to call him Bilbo more times that he could remember, but it seemed that there was just no convincing people. “As I’ll ever be.” Thorin slowed the Ashpar and waited for Kili to jump in. Bilbo caught a glimpse of his face in the rearview mirror, his brow furrowed and mouth in a hard pink line.

Thorin drove over a low hill and turned a corner. Bilbo held his breath at the sight of crumbling ruins off to the left, gleaming as white as salt in the midday sun. “Dale.” Bilbo rested his forehead against the glass, taking in every crumbling piece of rock. “Oh, I would _love_ to go for a look sometime if we could.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” It was one of the warmer things that Thorin had said to him, but it was in that increasingly tiresome flat tone, and Bilbo didn’t know how to take it. They continued on, and in another fifteen minutes they approached a cluster of canvas tents and several similar automobiles parked in a haphazard row in the dust.

There was a familiar push of nerves in Bilbo’s throat, and it took some moments for him to place it. He didn’t recognise it until the Ashpar rumbled to a stop and a number of figures filtered out of those greyish canvas tents; it was the same way Bilbo felt when he first stood at the gates of Stonewell Grammar, then at Upton, and then at Rivendell. It was the nervousness of approaching a group of strangers for the first time, a group that he would have to spend his life with, eat and sleep beside, and as of this moment he knew nothing about them. Would they be eager and bright as Kili, kindly and reserved like Balin, or polite and standoffish like Thorin? There were to be fourteen in all, Bilbo remembered somewhat hazily from the night before, including the latecomer Fili and Bilbo himself. The nerves increased.

Thorin opened the car door for him, although he didn’t have a smile as he did it. “Welcome, Mr Baggins.” Bilbo stepped out cautiously, wincing as a cold breeze whipped about his face. “This is your world for the next six weeks.” Bilbo couldn’t look at him.

Two days, that was all it took for everything to be turned upside down. Two days ago, Bilbo was nothing more than the mostly respectable Mr Baggins, bookshop owner and community figure. Now, he was committing himself to sleeping beside _dwarves_ for six weeks, toiling all day in the rock and dust of a not-entirely proven ruin on restricted land under the command of a haughty and unapproachable dwarf who clearly disliked him, and who he coincidentally just couldn’t stop looking at whenever he had the opportunity.

Bilbo thought he was going to be sick.


	5. Chapter 5

"All right, let me take you through our troupe." Balin took his elbow, adopting a brisk, businesslike tone as they strode across the rock. "Bifur, Bofur and Bombur are our miners. Piles of experience and nobody else can operate the drilling equipment. They're a little rough and rowdy, but they mean well, really. Oin and Gloin are our chief investors, wealthy family, and have been supporters of Thorin for years and years. They're rather old fashioned, but you should be all right. Ori, of course, is our little geologist. His older brothers are here too. Nori isn't too keen on this, but he owes Thorin quite a big favour. He's useful in a pinch, but if he tries to sell you anything, just say you're not interested."

Bilbo wondered what he meant, head in a whirl as Balin rattled off the names. "Dori is the eldest, and he's a good solid chap. Runs a tea shop in the city of all things, and makes a delicious cheese scone. Ori isn't allowed anywhere without him. Then there's my brother Dwalin. He's a detective, but he left his badge behind in Olvath." Balin winked. Behind them, Kili carried the heavy trunk. "Everybody knows everybody to some extent, and they're all good enough people. You'll get along just fine."

“Well,” the words stumbled out before Bilbo had a chance to control them, “so long as they’re not like Thorin…”

“Oh, don’t worry about him. Thorin’s been a little brisk, but he’ll warm up.” Balin brushed Bilbo’s concerns away like a ball of lint under the rug. “He’s always been wary of outsiders. He didn’t want to bring anybody else in, but as I pointed out, we won’t get very far with absolutely no grasp of the language and culture our ancestors used.” They had approached the rather straggled line of dwarves, Balin resting a hand on Bilbo’s shoulder. “Chaps, this is Mr Baggins, our historical expert. He’s a respectable fellow who’s lived in the Shire for a goodly while, and I want you to show our best dwarvish hospitality. Nori, Bofur, _Kili,_ ” The faded blue eyes flashed. “You three, especially, need to behave.”

“What, us? When have we _ever_ done anything wrong?” Kili grabbed Bilbo’s wrist. “C’mon, I’ve already lugged your trunk in, but let me show you where everything is. You’ll have the best time, really.

“Er, hello, all!” Bilbo managed a brief, nervous smile and wave before Kili and another dwarf, dark-haired with a thick moustache that drooped to his chin but no beard, whisked him away.

“Bofur’s the name, and it’s jolly good to see you. I was dead worried, no lie, when Balin said we’d be having a university sort around here, but you look all right.”

“He’s fine.” Kili grinned. “You’re not a stiff, are you, Mr Baggins?”

Bilbo blinked. “Er, I suppose not—”

“‘Course not. I’m sorry Uncle Thorin’s been such a grump this morning. It’s probably all my fault, he hasn’t even smiled since I got back last night.” Thorin’s mood had fouled earlier than that, but Bilbo held his tongue.

“Right.” Bofur jammed his thumb in the direction of the biggest tent. “This is the mess. First grub’s at seven and supper at half-past five. Bombur and Dori keep the food locked up, so don’t even try to filch off ‘em, you’ll get a thick ear and no mistake.” The other tents, of varying sizes, were clustered in a half-circle around the mess. The other dwarves broke up in gentle chatter, with Balin, Thorin, and three other dwarves remaining in a secret knot at some distance apart. Bilbo wondered what they were discussing, and with a colouring of his large ears, had a sneaking suspicion that it was about _him._ The burning spread from his ears to his cheeks at the memory of Thorin’s interruption the night before, and he couldn’t quite put it out of his mind. He could only hope that his peeking had been interpreted as a rude, boundless curiosity rather than any sort of immoral desire. Oh, he hoped so.

“Are the beds all claimed?” Kili asked. “Any good spots I should pilfer before Balin gets his big nose in?”

“I’ve already bagsed you one with Bifur and Bombur and I.” Bofur winked. “It was either that or old Oin and Gloin.”

Kili’s handsome face wrinkled. “Ugh, _never.”_

“And you, Mr Baggins, will have your own private tent at the end.” Bofur pointed it out. “That rather biggish one is where all the technology and communications equipment are laid out. If you need to send a telegram, that’s where you’ll be. There’s a village about twenty miles east, which Dwalin’ll be visiting every few days to drop off mail and get more supplies. Looks like it’ll be quite a tight wee ship. With Thorin in charge, I wouldn’t expect any less, mind.”

They settled down at a long table with cups of strong black tea in chipped blue-rimmed enamel mugs. Nori, dressed far too nicely for this sort of carry-on (suspiciously nicely, Bilbo thought) in a grey flannel waistcoat and trousers, sleeves rolled to the elbow, joined after a time with Ori, the young student who had made the geological discovery. He looked just like any other undergraduate Bilbo had seen at Rivenell, clean-shaven, bespectacled and rather timid in his knitted vest and collared shirt but with a quickness in his hazel eyes that suggested nothing ever slipped past him unnoticed.

Kili regaled the little group of last night’s misadventure over a game of rummy, gesturing wildly and pausing for effect, having them alternatively gasping and in stitches. Bilbo lost the first few hands, rusty in his playing cards, and excused himself. Nori, who had been smoking cigarettes incessantly, remarked that he hoped Bilbo would have a swell time, and Ori smiled nervously.

“Um, excuse me?” Bilbo stopped outside the remaining large tent, peeking in through the flap. There were several benches laid out awaiting the fruits of their excavation, and several pieces of geological equipment (Bilbo assumed) still in their leather cases. Thorin sat alone at a tiny folding table, frowning at a typewritten letter. “Oh,” he reddened, “I do hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Just reading a submission to my office.” Thorin deliberately put the paper face down on the table. “Is everything suited to your comfort?”

“Well, yes, thank you.” Bilbo found his palms were sweating. He wished Thorin would either be welcoming or outwardly plain in his rudeness. This frosty politeness was wearing his nerves to rags. “I was just wondering if I could send a brief telegram—”

“No. It’s stated quite clearly in your contract that you are forbidden to use radio communication.” Thorin turned his attention to a pad of paper at the table, jotting down a few notes. His fountain pen was a beautiful Nimras of smooth black enamel, inlaid with what looked like gold in geometric squares. Bilbo immediately wanted to try it. “You are under the strictest confidentiality here, Mr Baggins.”

“Yes, I understand.” Bilbo stood on one leg, getting flustered. “But, you see, I left in quite a hurry. There is still half a pint of milk in the refrigerator and a loaf of bread in the pantry I’d like someone to dispose of. And my bookshop, I left it in charge of my assistant and I’d like to know how she was getting on.”

“You’re welcome to write a letter.” Thorin wrote rapidly in what had to be some sort of shorthand, eyes never leaving the page. “It should reach the Shire three or four days, after being rerouted somewhere less conspicuous.”

“Just a quick message—”

“Mr Baggins.” Thorin set down his pen, finally turning his cold stare towards Bilbo. “Please, do not force me to be discourteous. Understand, this isn’t out of any rudeness or dislike. Aside from the very probable chance that any messages would be intercepted, I do not know who you will be sending it too. I don’t know who will be reading it. As long as there is even the slightest chance that anybody should find out where you are, I am sorry but the risk is just too great.”

Bilbo deflated. “But Marigold is lovely—” Thorin held up his hand. “All right. All right. I am sorry.”

“Look.” Thorin sighed. “Sit down.” He gestured to a low folding stool, which Bilbo took rather cautiously. “I don’t think you quite grasp the seriousness of what is happening. This is not your normal archeological excavation. What we are doing is not only dangerous, but incredibly illegal.” Bilbo listened silently, hands folded in his lap. “We will most certainly be charged with trespass once we are found out. There will be lawsuits and court cases, some of which I will be unable to protect you from.”

“Wh-What?” Bilbo tensed. “You didn’t say there was a chance I could be arrested!”

“We’re trespassing on restricted land, Mr Baggins. Did you think you would be welcomed with a cup of tea and a biscuit?” Bilbo started to breathe rather heavily, shaking his head until his hair fell over his eyes. “I outlined the risk of criminal charges in your contract—”

“I was drunk!” Bilbo exclaimed, half-getting out of his stool. There was a startling flash of shock in Thorin’s brilliantly blue eyes, and his knuckles had gone white around his pen. “I should never have signed the blasted thing in that state— I shouldn’t even be here at all.” His elbows sank onto his knees, stomach knotting in his humiliation and unease.

Thorin set down his pen with a little click, and Bilbo heard his stool creak. “Do you want to go home?” There was a softer note in his voice, one Bilbo hadn’t heard before. Sympathy, perhaps. He must have sensed Bilbo’s nerves.

“No— No, I don’t.” Bilbo lifted his head, sucking in a deep breath of air as though he was about to launch headfirst into the Brandywine River on a cold night. “Forgive me, I’m… I didn’t realise what I was getting myself into.” He admitted, legs crossed at the ankle.

“For what it’s worth,” Thorin started toying with his pen and not looking at him, wiping a blob of ink from the nib with his thumb, voice warmer than Bilbo had remembered hearing before “I am glad you decided to join us.”

Bilbo’s heart was beating painfully fast and heavy now, his voice catching in his throat. “Y-You are?”

“I didn’t want a man or orc here if I could help it, and elves were certainly out of the question. Ancient Khuzdul is only taught with any seriousness at Rivendell, and only a dozen or so dwarves have graduated in the last thirty years. Balin tracked about half of them down, and they were all unsuitable for a number of reasons. I was getting worried that we would have to bring in an outsider, or worse, muddle through ourselves.” As Thorin spoke, the warmth died in his voice and he adopted that now familiar businesslike tone, brisk and cool.

“So I was the best of a bad bunch.” Bilbo watched Thorin’s hands, still toying with his pen. Thorin made a little sharp sound in his throat, like the first half of a chuckle.

“Don’t feign humility, Mr Baggins, it’s unbecoming. First-class honours in the most prestigious university in Arda is a monumental achievement, and you know it.” Thorin fished out a pad of airmail paper, bleached white and ruled with blue, and set his fountain pen down on top of it. “Look, write a long letter to your assistant. Make up some excuse for your hasty disappearance. Would she believe a family member had taken ill?”

Bilbo shook his head. “My aunts and uncles and cousins all live in the Shire, Buckland at a stretch, and I only see them once or twice a year all the same. She’ll never buy it.” Bilbo turned the luxurious pen over in his fingers. “I wouldn’t just up sticks and take a holiday out of the blue, she’ll know something’s up. I suppose I could say I’m attending one of those hospitals in disguise they put you in if you’re about to dive off the deep end.”

“Whatever you think will be the most believable.” Thorin gathered up his papers and stuffed them inside a slim black briefcase leaning against the folding table. “I’ll vet it and have Dwalin post it when he’s next in the village. He’ll reroute it through whatever town you claim to be staying in and nobody shall be the wiser.”

“You really have thought of everything, haven’t you?” Thorin stood up, holding his briefcase. He half-smiled at Bilbo.

“I’m risking my career for this. I’m not going to get tripped up by a simple mistake.” He left Bilbo to his letter without another word.

The ink flowed beautifully from the silver nib of Thorin’s Nimras, and Bilbo resolved that he would buy one for himself as a treat, even if it did cost as much as twenty pounds. After some thought, Bilbo settled on his final story and constructed a rather solid narrative of fraying nerves, sleepless nights and an eventual breakdown that necessitated a sudden interruption of his routine and admission to an unassuming seaside hotel on the Andras peninsula in southern Gondor. The weather was excellent, he wrote, and the food suited to a hobbit’s taste. He had a psychiatrist who prescribed long walks and a journal and forbade him from reading the newspaper. Bilbo detailed this fantasy in three pages, inventing an eccentric old dwarf claiming to hear voices who had the room beside him, a once-ornate building that was now rather worn and shabby with unfashionable antique furniture and no plumbing or electricity in his room, a sprawling and overgrown garden with twisting pathways that vanished suddenly into the rocky coastline and a clean lighthouse kept by an old bachelor who sat on the rocks with a fishing pole and a clay pipe and didn’t speak to anybody. It was all something out of a novel. He signed the letter and left it in an open envelope with Marigold’s address on the table, slinking off with a heavy feeling in his stomach and heart.

Bilbo spent the rest of the evening reading in a corner of the large mess tent and went to bed early, still hovering uncertainly on the outside of this rather rag-tag group of dwarves. He was welcomed by most of them (Thorin remaining the coolest and most distant), but Bilbo still felt as though he didn’t belong quite just yet, and he was happy after the days he’d had to be left alone with his thoughts. In his tent (which was far nicer than Bilbo expected and big enough to comfortably sleep two), a sleeping bag and pillow were rolled up on a stretcher, his trunk at the foot, a low canvas stool at the head, and a tin basin of water resting on an upturned crate. It was all in murky, military shades of brown and grey, the electric torch Balin gave him throwing ominous shadows against the canvas walls.

It was chilly, and Bilbo dressed quickly into his pajamas. He laid out his palm-sized travel clock on the stool, a present he bought for his birthday five years ago and until now had never used, brushed his teeth and washed his face and combed his hair as he did every night. The sleeping bag was made of a strange, plastic-feeling material that rustled with every movement, but it was warm, and with his own blanket draped over top, he was positively toasty. The stretcher was far from comfortable, and he could hear the distant chatter and laughter of half a dozen dwarves. His stomach was still a bundle of nerves, and Bilbo thought he would be tossing and turning for hours. But despite all the distractions both outside the tent and inside his head, Bilbo was dead to the world fifteen minutes after his freshly-combed head hit the pillow.

* * *

Bilbo’s first big shock came at breakfast. He sat between Kili and Balin, dressed in his second-best trousers and fourth-best shirt, shivering in his thin clothes but trying to hide it. There was strong tea waiting for him in an enamel mug and he sipped at it, rather bleary. Bombur moved from dwarf to dwarf carrying a large saucepan of something steaming. Bilbo saw it was porridge, doled out in sloppy ladlefuls, thick and lumpy and grey. Everyone dove in as Bombur walked down the table, speaking loudly through mouthfuls of the stuff. Bilbo had only eaten porridge in his Upton days, and even then with lashings of cream and heaped teaspoons of brown sugar. He looked up and down the table hopefully, but there was none to be found. Bombur slapped a fist-sized lump in his chipped bowl with an unpleasant splat, and Bilbo stared apprehensively down at it. That was breakfast. Bilbo pushed at the sticky ball of slightly over-cooked porridge with his spoon, thinking wistfully of the sort of breakfast he would have at home; eggs and bacon sizzling from the pan on buttered toast with a fried tomato and some hash browns if he was feeling particularly peckish.

Kili elbowed him. “Eat up.” He muttered. “You won’t get anything more till supper tonight.” That was the second big shock.

Somehow he swallowed it all down, trying to suck the oats out from between his teeth as the dwarves argued over seconds, both hands wrapped around his mug. After breakfast he approached Thorin, who was back in his makeshift office, rifling through papers.

“Yes?” Thorin didn’t look up. Bilbo cleared his throat nervously and shuffled from foot to foot, hands behind his back.

“Well, I-I was wondering where you wanted me.” Thorin’s eyes flicked up. “I haven’t been here before, and, er, I just wasn’t sure what— well, what it is I should be doing. For now at least.” Bilbo thrust his hands in his pockets. Thorin simply gave him another one of his sharp stares, as though Bilbo had offended him, and he felt his face heating up. “I suppose… I’m probably a little rusty with my Khuzdul and whatnot. I could do with some time to catch up.”

“If you like.” Thorin’s eyes returned to the page as he considered the matter closed. Bilbo wanted to scream. He made his way into his tent and gathered up several books, a pen and a notebook. Inside the mess tent, Gloin and Oin argued over a list of expenses, Dori and Balin were scrubbing up after breakfast, clattering bowls and splashing water, and Kili and Nori were at cards again. The generator rumbled through the canvas walls of the tent. Kili had brought his record player and had turned it on to drown out the noise, chattering with Nori about a film he’d seen the week before. Bilbo inhaled deeply and settled down at the farthest seat from the noise, but it was impossible to concentrate over the cacophony, and as Bilbo tried to recite verb conjugations in his head, he found himself humming along to Kili’s rock and roll record instead.

So he tried to study in his tent. It was dim inside, even with the flap open, but if Bilbo sat on his low stool and squinted and held the book just so on his knee to catch the pale rectangle of light, he found it was just bright enough to read. He perched cautiously, his notebook balanced on one leg, book on the other. It strained his thighs and his neck ached from the uncomfortable angle but just as he thought he could just manage, he let out a terrific sneeze that sent his books flying out of his lap.

Bilbo gathered everything up and stood outside in the dust. It was a grey, windy sort of day, the one that would flap his pages about and blow any loose papers away, so he couldn’t even resort to crouching outside on some large flat rock. There was really nothing for it. Once more, he approached Thorin, finding him in the exact same position, hunched and concentrating, with another official looking letter in his hand, making notes with his beautiful fountain pen.

“Er, I’m so sorry to disturb you.” Thorin heaved a deep sigh, the low, rumbly kind in his throat that suggest annoyance, and closed his eyes before capping his pen.

“Yes, Mr Baggins?” He eyed the books in Bilbo’s arms with that hard, steely expression. “What is it now?”

“Well, it’s just— I’m trying to study elsewhere, but it’s far too loud in the mess and my own tent is so very dark—”

“Would you like a lantern?” Thorin abruptly cut him off with an arch of his impressive brow. Bilbo was taken aback (although why he didn’t know, as Thorin’s shortness was far from surprising already), and it took a moment for him to collect his thoughts and stumble a reply.

“Well, it’s not just the darkness.” Bilbo’s toes curled. “See, it’s quite tricky to hold all these books without a table. I’ve always found it best to spread everything out; I like to read from several sources at once, you see, and—”

“Fine.” Thorin waved his hand, and Bilbo shut his mouth. “Take a seat at one of the benches for now, and we’ll work something more permanent shortly. Please try not to be too loud. I can’t abide distraction.”

“Me neither.” Bilbo took a seat nearest to the back and laid out his things. Thorin grunted and returned to his work. Bilbo was sitting behind him at a right angle, and if he turned his head to the side he could see Thorin’s bent head, the shape of his back and shoulders absorbed in his work. He completely ignored Bilbo, which suited the both of them perfectly. Bilbo was able to lean on one elbow and look as though he was reading, when in actually he was studying the curve of Thorin’s bent figure, the inkstain of dark hair falling over his shoulders and down to the small of his back. Bilbo stared as though in a dream, idly swinging one leg, the books and notes ignored for now.

Yes, Bilbo decided, despite the rumble in his belly and the chill on his skin and the stiffness in his back from the stretcher. Some parts of this odd little adventure were going to be downright enjoyable, with a bit of luck. 

 


	6. Chapter 6

Bilbo became acquainted with the rag-tag troupe of twelve dwarves as several days passed, settling — as a hobbit’s was wont to do — into a clean, tidy routine. He woke around six, washed and dressed, took breakfast and then spent the mornings poring over his books, copying pages of notes, making down references to Erebor or to Longbeard dwarves in particular and relearning his now-spotty grammar and vocabulary. Lunch appeared not to be a dwarvish tradition, but Bilbo managed to beg (if Bombur was around, and ‘borrow’ if he was not) a slice of bread and margarine, which could _just_ tide him over until supper. In the afternoons, Bilbo took to hiking around the area, often with Kili, Nori and Ori in tow, climbing rocks and hunching over in the wind. Knowing that soon the mining equipment could crack through the stone and he would be swamped with work, Bilbo was determined to see as much of the area as he could. Thorin forbade them from going near Dale just yet (probably to annoy Bilbo, he grumbled to himself) but they could still wander over the foothills, provided they wear dark clothes and hide if they hear the rumble of a plane approach. It was a grey, rather downcast landscape, all stone and dirt with sparse patches of scrubby grass clinging to the ground. Kili complained and said the whole place was miserable and he didn’t see why anyone would want to live here, but Bilbo found the wild ruggedness romantic. It was bitter and unwelcoming and brimming with secrets.

Dinner was a rowdy affair that seemed to go on for hours. The food was all the same — root vegetables, thick, salty stocks, meat that appeared to come from tins and rather stale bread to mop it all up, but Bilbo ate every last bite. Sometimes he stayed and joined in a game of cards or listened in to the trade of banter across the table, but Bilbo usually went to bed early, the night air seeming to drain the life from him and leave no strength for talking. He read, rationed his one packet of biscuits, wrote in his journal, or just lay on his back and listened to the distant chatter of voices, entombed in a chilly darkness.

It was strange, Bilbo mused on the fourth morning, staring up at his tent ceiling and listening to the soft ticking of his travel clock. Some of the things he thought he would miss dreadfully; the daily newspaper, the radio, fresh milk each morning, young Miss Betsy’s delicious carrot cake at the tea shop down by the station, were barely a passing thought. But other things he’d never considered were driving Bilbo batty. He didn’t bring enough novels and found himself already rereading the first again. He hadn't heard birdsong since he arrives. The quietness of night after everyone had gone to bed was deeply disconcerting. He didn’t bring his shampoo and his hair was starting to need a wash. Despite the loss of his home comforts, Bilbo realised, he was _happier_ in this camp clustered in the foothills of this mountain than he could remember being in months, perhaps even years, and he couldn't put his finger exactly on why.

As far as Bilbo could tell, the others seemed to like him. They all smiled when he said good morning, pulled up a chair for him, were happy to retell a story from the beginning to include him, cheerfully ask how his day went, laugh at his muted jokes. Oin and Gloin said Bilbo was welcome to stay in their cottage in the Grey Mountains next ski season if he was so inclined. Bofur said he’d ‘shout Bilbo a round down the Nag’s Head’, which Bilbo took to be some kind of pub. Nori even said he could get Bilbo an excellent deal on a new television set (‘just fell off the back of a truck, clean as you like. Swear on my mother’s grave’) if he was looking to spend his newfound windfall. Thorin, however, remained as curt and distant as he did the night Bilbo met him. He cut Bilbo off if he thought he was babbling, gave one-word responses to Bilbo’s questions (if he answered them at all), and never, ever instigated a single word of conversation. On top of this, Bilbo didn’t even know if Thorin was like this to anybody else; he took his meals alone, spent all day writing letters and reading official-looking documents, and went to his tent straight after dinner. He lived apart from the others, with his own troubles and concerns, and not even Balin got much of a look in.

This morning, Thorin was already awake and scribbling at his desk when Bilbo entered, not looking up. Bilbo gave him his usual ‘good morning,’ Thorin his usual grunt in response, and with a mug of tea in his hands, Bilbo settled back in at his books, shooting furtive looks over at the dwarf. He wished he could crack Thorin open and see just how his brain worked. Bilbo wouldn’t be surprised to find a network of cogs and gears and circuits inside his skull, like one of the machine-people in novels and magazines that Kili probably read. Everything Thorin did was mechanical, precise, measured and evaluated and it sometimes made Bilbo want to scream. He wanted to shake Thorin’s shoulders and beg him to just _do something_ that looked and seemed human.

About an hour after Bilbo sat down (and, admittedly, gotten very little done, too busy sketching a picture of what Thorin’s machine-brain could look like to work on his verbs), Dwalin stepped in, hands in his pockets. “All right, I’ll be off in half an hour. Got a list for me?”

Thorin set down his pen. “Here.” He pushed a crisp white envelope across the folding table. “There’s some instructions in here, if you please. And if you could send these,” he presented a stack of airmail envelopes, bound in a tidy bundle with string “to Njir and get them through my offices.”

“Are you going to the village?” Bilbo piped up. Thorin looked over his shoulder at the hobbit, giving him a stern look. Dwalin put the letters in his pocket with a nod. “Ooh— If I can give you a list of things for _me,_ do you think you could? I have money.”

“Sure.” Dwalin shrugged. “I’ve got a long list already, what’s a few more? I’m picking Fili up from the station, so I’ll have help.” Bilbo tore a fresh sheet out of his notebook and started jotting things down as they came to him — a tin, no, _several tins_ , of shortbread biscuits for afternoon tea, more of his particular shampoo, an ounce of Old Toby if he could get it (otherwise Buckshire would do, a tobacco leaf Bilbo knew was exported as far east as the Orocani ranges), a packet of Turondo blend tea, his favourite, these three novels if he could…

“Er, Bilbo.” Dwalin’s voice at Bilbo’s elbow made him start. “You want be to fetch the kitchen sink while I’m gone?” Bilbo looked down and realised that his list was half a page long.

“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “I, um, didn’t pack quite what I thought I would need. Perhaps I should shorten it.”

“Tea and biscuits I can do, but…” He leaned in. “Billingford’s Lustre-creme? Isn’t that for lasses?”

Bilbo’s face grew hot. “I just… I like the way it makes my hair sit.” He rubbed his nose and scratched it out on the paper. “OK, perhaps not that, then. But I need the hand lotion. The mountain air is making them dry something fierce.”

“Look, why don’t you just come with me? You don’t take up much space and I’m not asking for this lot at a pharmacy, they’ll think I’m a…” Dwalin coughed. “You know. Thorin?” He turned. “Is it all right if Bilbo just comes along?”

Thorin made a low, rumbling noise in the back of his throat, setting down his pen. He looked Bilbo up and down, trying to pick him apart. “Fine.” He finally muttered, rolling his eyes. “Just keep him away from the post office.”

* * *

“Fili’s bus arrives at eleven.” Dwalin shouted over the engine as the Ashpar shuddered on the road. “We’ll meet him first, get his kit in and see to fresh supplies. Stick close to me. These folk are a little distrusting of outsiders, and you don’t exactly look like a local boy.”

Bilbo gripped the seat and held on for dear life as Dwalin tore through the foothills as fast as the automobile allowed, skidding on the corners with none of his brother’s careful handling. “All right!” He squeaked back, screaming prayers to every deity both old and new he could remember in his head.

At least the sealed road was smoother. Bilbo sank bonelessly into the seat as they turned onto the motorway, looking pale and clutching his stomach. "What, sick?" Dwalin chuckled. "Oh don't look so reproachful. You'll be all right."

They stopped in Elsie, a pleasant village twenty miles east of the mountain, nestled in rather craggy hills of naked rock. It was still grey but much less blustery, and Bilbo felt uncomfortably warm in his layers of warm clothing. "Tell you what, go to the pub down the road and get us a table. I'll tend to a few things and see if I can find Fili. Won't be long."

It turned out Bilbo found him first. Sitting outside at a table was a handsome blonde dwarf in an olive-green army uniform, complete with a tie and brass buttons, reading a distinctive bright yellow Pelican paperback. A cigarette was perched between his fingers and in front of him was a half-empty coffee; orcish style, black as pitch and in a tiny cup. Beneath the table was a bulging military issue pack. It looked like a still from a movie. With his short back and sides (not quite in fashion anymore, but it suited him) clean-shaven face and sharp, elegant features, it was a severe inverse of Kili, and if they stood side-by-side, Bilbo would find it difficult to believe they were even related. But Yvannah, he was as handsome as his brother and uncle, there was no doubt about that.

"Er, hello." Bilbo approached him cautiously. “Are you Fili, by any chance?"

"Yes, hello." Fili set down his book. "Can I help?"

"Well, I'm Bilbo Baggins. I don't know if your uncle mentioned me by name, but I'm the consultant on his expedition up... west." He caught himself, flashing a nervous smile.

"Mr Baggins, a pleasure." Fili crushed out his cigarette and stood up. "Lovely to meet you. Is it going well? My uncle's a bore and my brother's a terror. I hope it hasn't been too awful for you."

Bilbo sat down and ordered tea when the waitress next passed, filling him in. There wasn't much to tell — Bilbo had finished before the tea brewed — and he went on to ask Fili about where he was stationed and how it was all getting on. Draining his coffee with a shudder and a mutter that nobody north of the Ash Mountains could get a _gazkhak_ right, Fili explained he was mainly doing patrol and guard work in a city near the former front lines (although he didn't specify which one).

Dwalin eventually found them, greeting Fili with a big hug that left him red and embarrassed. Fili had heard the Test on the radio and recounted the final day's play for Bilbo (Gondor pulled off a blinding win in the last hour and notched up a new record for the ninth wicket), who felt somewhat dour for a time that he had missed the commentary. They ate steak-and-kidney pie with chips and then made their way up and down the single street, ticking things from Dwalin’s list and taking it in trips back to the car. Fili was a quiet lad, looking lost in his thoughts much of the time, and his stories about his deployment were short and relatively sterile, as though he was telling them to an elderly relative or a small child. Bilbo got almost everything he needed (although at the chemist be lied and said that the shampoo and lotion was for his wife), but emerged empty-handed from the village's only bookstore; their selection was limited and not really to Bilbo’s taste, and everything that looked remotely interesting Bilbo had already read.

All the while, there was a sort of distractedness to the three of them, as though they were aware of someone breathing down their necks. It wasn't until they were back behind the boom gate that they could breathe freely. Dwalin clapped Fili on the shoulder as he jumped back into the passenger seat after locking the gate behind them. “Good to have you back, lad.” The engine rumbled beneath their feet. “Wouldn’t dream of doing this without you.”

When they pulled up at the camp, Kili was already waiting for them, crouched on a big rock and hunched in the wind. At the sight of the truck he jumped up and ran, the smile visible on his face from fifty yards away. Fili pulled open the door before Dwalin had even rolled to a stop, his polished boots crunching on the gravel. They collided into each other, winded, Kili pretending to get him in a headlock and Fili mock-struggling. As Bilbo got out, they were still laughing and tussling, trying to one-up each other as their voices carried into the valley.

“I swear, brother, at least a thousand people. You've never seen anything like it."

"Oh bull, do you think I don't read the papers? It was three hundred, tops."

"They're lying! It filled up the whole Memorial Square by the museum. I even have a photo. They do it all the time—"

"Kili, stop talking your brother's ear off and get these bags inside." Thorin cut over them, standing with his arms crossed and looking unsure if he should be smiling or scowling. The pair sprang apart and Bilbo realised how tall Kili was. He towered half a head over Fili, height exaggerated by his awkward lankiness. It looked comical, the soldier and the rebel without a cause, holding hands and exchanging secret grins.

“Yes, uncle.” Kili leaned in to whisper something in Fili’s ear and sauntered off towards the truck, rolling his dark eyes. With his hand still on the door handle, Bilbo watched Thorin approach Fili and tightly embrace him with a tenderness that was utterly foreign and unexpected. He _smiled_ as he held Fili and it completely transformed Thorin, as though a sunbeam lit up across his face. Bilbo clung to the door handle as his knees went weak, and he tried to pass off his breathlessness as mild confusion.

“Yeah, Fili’s the favourite.” Kili must have seen Bilbo’s face as he unloaded a cardboard box of tins and potatoes from the boot. “Thorin loves him to bits.” They both watched as Thorin pulled back, holding Fili’s arms and asking him soft, serious questions, his smile fading. “ _He_ doesn’t mess up all the time.” And there was an edge to Kili’s voice in that, something that bordered on the begrudging, but just as Bilbo opened his mouth to question him, Kili hefted the box in his arms, shifting the weight, and made his way towards the mess tent.

So it wasn’t Thorin being Thorin, then. In the hour before dinner, Bilbo lay on his back in the tent and munched on a shortbread, head pillowed on a folded arm. His book lay open beside him, face-down, but Bilbo didn’t feel much like reading. It seemed that Thorin wasn’t as impermeable and unrelenting as Bilbo had first thought. There was a way in. His face flushed at his own obsession, and Bilbo bitterly cursed himself for his stupidity. He was far too old and respectable to be acting like a schoolgirl with a secret fancy, and to _Thorin Oakenshield_ of all people... Anybody, any other dwarf on this mountain, in the entire _world_ would have a less painful and humiliating object of Bilbo’s desires, but the longer Bilbo thought, the more he realised that he didn’t want anybody else. He didn’t want Kili’s rugged handsomeness, Fili’s clean-cut good looks, Ori’s owlish schoolboy curiosity, Dwalin’s grittiness or Nori’s shrewd charm. Thorin made him want to tear his hair out, but with just one flash of his brilliant blue eyes made everything else fall away – his rudeness, his awkward silence, his haughty and sometimes condescending tone. He’d endure all of it, every snubbed question, every scoff and eye-roll and painful moment of silence just to be close to him. There was no denying Bilbo had fallen, but it wasn’t until he saw Thorin smile that he realised just _how much_. Bilbo wiped the crumbs from his fingers on his breeches and closed his eyes, ready for the earth to swallow him up and rid him of this whole uncomfortable mess.

“Hi, Bilbo.” His eyes snapped open as Kili peeked into the tent. “Suppertime. You coming?”

“Oh,” Bilbo blinked and sat up, realising he’d lost track of time. “Is it that late? Give me a moment.”

“Or are you all full up?” Kili grinned as he slipped inside. He must have seen the biscuits. Bilbo looked down and realised he’d absentmindedly munched through half the tin. That could explain the awful sickly knot in his stomach.

“Here, have one.” Bilbo held it out. “I’ve had enough for now.” Kili took _two_ , the cheeky brat, getting crumbs all over his chin. “You must be excited, having Fili back.” He tried for conversation, getting the lid back on the tin. “When did you last see him?”

“Mm,” Kili wiped at his mouth. “Six months ago he was in town for a weekend of leave, but we didn’t get to talk _properly._ Thorin made us go out for dinners and lunches and it was such a snore. I feel like I haven’t had a good yarn with him in over a year. You only get fifteen minutes on the phone over there, if you’re lucky. I haven’t even _spoken_ to him about what he’s been doing. He’s so tight-lipped about it, I want to thump him.”

“His service you mean?” Kili nodded and sat down on Bilbo’s low stool with his lanky legs stretched out. “Do you know where he was?”

“Well, everyone sort of does. It’s not secret.” Kili stared very hard at Bilbo’s tin of shortbread, and with a sigh he passed it over. “You remember about four or five months ago, there was some pretty big fighting in Aangoi, in North Harad, the rebel uprising and all that?” Bilbo nodded. “Well,” Kili sprayed crumbs as he spoke. “Fili was in it. I think he’s seen a lot of action.” His voice softened and there was a distant look in Kili’s eyes. He seemed wistful, talking about his brother’s heroism. “Anyway.” Kili stuffed another biscuit in his mouth. “Come on, let’s get some real grub before the rest snaffle it.”

* * *

The next morning, Bilbo took his regular seat in Thorin’s tent with a cup of Turondo blend and a dash of milk and sugar, determined to crack into his books and really get ahead on his grammar today. Thorin wasn’t around, and Bilbo allowed himself a rare moment of relaxation, leaning back in his chair and twirling his pen in his hands, drifting off. After a few moments he twirled a little too fast and the pen was flung out of his hands and across the small tent, landing under one of the tables groaning with untouched equipment. There was no rug or carpet and Bilbo grumbled to himself as he got on his hands and knees, promptly covering himself in powder-fine dust. It was dim at the back of the tent, especially under the table and he fumbled about in the stones, searching for the familiar touch of his pen.

“Did you sleep well?” Bilbo gasped at the sound of Thorin’s voice, low and warm. “How’s your bed?”

“It’s fine, Thorin.” Bilbo could hear the smile in Fili’s words. “Don’t _worry_ about me. I’m fine, honestly.”

“Of course I’m going to fuss. Did you tell anyone about the—”

“ _No._ ” Fili sharpened. “I didn’t tell anyone about the crash. Especially Kili. So, please, don’t bring it up, OK? I’m fine. They examined me and ran tests and everything. They have good doctors now, it’s not like your day. They catch anything before it gets bad.”

“They wouldn’t have been so quick to approve your extended leave if they didn’t think something was wrong.”

Fili chuckled, wry and bitter. “Thorin, they sent me away because the campaign failed and they don’t know how to tell everybody. We didn’t have a single consignment the last week I was there, not even a patrol.” Bilbo held his breath, hand closing around the familiar cherry-wood of his pen. It was a minor relief now. _How on earth was he going to get out of here?_ The time for brushing it off as an awkward mistake had passed; Bilbo was eavesdropping now, and there was no way he could conceivably talk his way out of this.

“Just— You’ll tell me, won’t you, if something goes wrong. I can’t go through it all again.” Bilbo dared to peek out from under the table for a half-second and saw that Thorin had wrapped Fili in a tight hug, his face hidden. “It’s good to have you back.”

“Good to be back.” They pulled away, and Bilbo ducked back under the table, heart thumping. “Come on, have a cup of tea with Kili and I before you chain yourself to your desk for the day. But _don’t_ be unkind to him, please.”

“I’m never unkind.” But Thorin must have heeded his nephew, because Bilbo could hear their shoes crunching on the stones, and when he dared to look up again, the tent was empty. Sighing heavily, he crawled out from under the table and threw himself on his chair, hunching his shoulders and staring intently down at his book, trying to look absorbed in his word.

His head, though, was going fifty miles an hour as he puzzled through the half-conversation he’d just heard. Was there some deeper trouble in Harad? Was Fili _sick?_ It was the only time Bilbo had heard Thorin genuinely upset and concerned, and the way Fili brushed it off so quickly and shut him down... well, Bilbo had been in that position of denial often enough to sniff out a lie.

About half an hour later, Thorin returned. There was a heavy, broody frown on his face, and he didn’t greet Bilbo as he sat down at his desk. Bilbo stared down at the page, willing himself to drop it and concentrate, but his curiosity couldn’t be contained. “Good morning!” He flashed a cheery grin. Thorin gave a soft grunt in response. “Sleep well?” Another grunt. Thorin was scribbling out a letter. Bilbo bit down on the inside of his cheek in thought, carefully laying down his pen and turning on his folding stool to regard Thorin properly. “Are you glad to have both of your nephews back?” Bilbo glanced at his trousers and realised with a heated flush that they were dusty and marked. He hid his knees back under the table again.

“Of course I am.” Thorin muttered down at the page. Bilbo rolled his eyes and tricked to pick up the thread of conversation again.

“It must be difficult, having him so far away. My relatives in Buckland are only an hour or so by train, but I never get to see them all the same. I hope the distance isn’t—”

“Bilbo, please.” Thorin cut in, heaving a long, aged sigh. “I need to get these letters written.” He resolutely turned to his papers without another word, leaving Bilbo frustrated and rather perplexed. There was no surge of indignation at his rebuff, and there was none of Thorin’s usual curtly terseness behind it. He sounded tired and distracted, as though he had fifty things jostling in his head and the last thing he wanted to do was entertain a nosy hobbit’s curiosity. Bilbo’s face was very red now, and when he turned back to his own papers and picked up his pen, he found his palms were clammy, his fingers fumbling and clumsy. It took a moment for Bilbo to realise _why_ he felt this way, and when he did, he couldn’t stop smiling to himself.

It was the first time Thorin had called him Bilbo.


	7. Chapter 7

“Bilbo! Bilbo!”

Bilbo groaned. He was just in the middle of a rather _lovely_ dream involving himself and Thorin Oakenshield on a warg-skin rug before a roaring fire, the kind where one would find themselves rousing halfway through and cling desperately to sleep in those last waking moments of sweetness. “Bilbo!”

He was awake now. Flushed, Bilbo rolled over onto his back and lifted his knees enough to create a tent beneath his rasping sleeping bag. “Kili?” He mumbled, rubbing at his eyes. Bilbo made out a lanky silhouette in the entrance to the tent, black against the white sky. Only one person here had legs that long and hair that wild. “What _time_ is it?”

“Oh, just about breakfast. Fili asked Thorin if he could go to Dale today, and Thorin said _yes!_ So hurry up and get your trousers on. Fili wants to go in fifteen minutes and you always take ages for breakfast.”

“Yes, yes.” Bilbo pressed his face into the pillow. “Five minutes.” He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to wish himself back to the fire, to the sharp contrast of warm glow of Thorin’s bare skin and his sharp blue eyes–

_Dale?_

Bilbo sat up, gasping as Kili’s screeching finally bit through the dreamy haze around his brain. _Thorin was letting them go to Dale?_

Two days in Erebor, and Fili already had Thorin wrapped around his finger then. Bilbo dressed as quickly as he could, fumbling as he combed his hair and sloshing his washbowl quite unfortunately down the front of his trousers. Kili was grinning at him across the table as he sat down, and Bilbo muttered the briefest of greetings before diving into his porridge with unprecedented gusto.

Four of them were going – Fili, Kili, Bilbo and Ori, who was keen to examine rock formations and analyse the stonework to see if any of it was imported. Fili and Kili wore canvas packs of spare clothes and ropes and foldable shovels and a large grey blanket to hide under in case they were out in the open and an aeroplane happened to fly by. Ori, promising to be careful, took the metal detector, picking his way slowly over the rocks with the pole slung over his shoulder, occasionally gripping Fili’s hand for balance as they clambered over a particularly sharp ledge.

They settled into two pairs; Bilbo and Kili up ahead, and Fili and Ori about fifty feet back. The wind seemed to have settled down, apart from the occasional breeze, and every so often a watery beam of sunlight would wrestle through the clouds and light up the ground in front of them, striped grey and black and bone-white and rust-red. Kili kicked at a fist-sized rock and chuckled, looking over his shoulder.

“I bet Ori could talk for hours about this.” Kili waved his hand at the landscape in front of him. “I don’t envy Fili right now.”

“Ori’s the reason any of us are here,” Bilbo pointed out. “I know you think he’s weird, but we owe him everything.”

Kili ignored the second half of Bilbo’s statement. “You don’t think Ori’s even a _little bit_ odd? Really? Come on,” He playfully shoved Bilbo’s shoulder. “I won’t tell. Ori and I are friends, sort of, and I hassle him all the time.”

“I’m not a gossip,” Bilbo’s voice was as terse and crisp as the mountain air that ruffled their hair. He sounded like _Thorin_ then, and with an uncomfortable _ahem_ in his throat, Bilbo leaned in with an air of conspiracy. “You should have seen _me_ when I was an undergraduate. I had the most awful sweaters – my great-aunt knitted them – and it was colder than you’d think, Rivendell being that close to the mountains. I had to wear _shoes_ to some of my lectures because the professors were so strict – ugh, awful things. I couldn’t walk in them. I looked like I had a permanent limp.” Kili sniggered at that. “I was a sight.”

They chatted a bit longer about nothing in particular, until Kili faded off into a pensive, wistful silence, and Bilbo caught him looking over his shoulder every few minutes. “Should we wait for them to catch up?” He suggested.

“Hm? Oh, no.” Kili shook his head. “I’m all right, really. They’ll be talking about all the places they’ve both been to in Mordor or something. It’s such a bore to listen to if you’ve never gone.” He sighed, dramatic and heavy, and his hands slipped into his pockets.

“Is it good to have him back, though?” Oh, poor Kili. He looked like a child who’d been left out, languishing under his uncle’s thumb while his brother went out and made a name for himself. “Fili, I mean.”

“Oh, yes.” Kili forced a smile. “We talked for hours and hours yesterday and half the night too. I’ve missed him more than anything. That’s the worst thing about him being in the army – apart from the danger, too. He’s always gone for ages and ages and I can’t do a thing about it.”

“It runs in the family though, doesn’t it?” Bilbo peeled back the hair over his eyes. “I mean, with Thorin and Fili and your father–”

Kili pulled up straight in his walk, his boots scraping sharply on the stony ground. Bilbo stopped and turned. Kili was staring at him with impossibly wide eyes and his mouth half-open, hands dangling at his sides. “M-My father?”

“Yes. I saw his picture on the wall at your home, in uniform.” Bilbo explained. Kili kept giving him that uneasy stare, head tilted to one side. “You know, over the china cabinet?”

“Oh!” Kili blinked and that twisted expression smoothed into a laugh. “Oh!” He laughed again and then sighed, shaking his head. “No, that’s not my father. That’s– That’s my uncle Frerin. Thorin’s my uncle through my mother’s side.”

“Ah,” Bilbo reddened, realising his blunder. “Er, my mistake. I-I didn’t realise…”

“No, it’s all right.” Kili waved his apology off, but there was something unsettled and tense in the curl of his mouth. It was such a _strange_ reaction from him, and Bilbo was aching to find out what secret Kili had almost inadvertently let slip. “Uncle Thorin doesn’t have many photographs of her.” He started walking again, briskly to keep well out of earshot of his brother, hands back in his pockets. Bilbo fell into step, listening keenly. “There’s some of all three of them as children, but none after the war. She ran away from home after they were conscripted and signed up to be a nurse. Said it wasn’t fair that she should sit idle by the fire while her brothers risked their lives for king and country.”

“That was very brave of her.” Kili stared out at the distant ruins of Dale, mouth drooping and wistful.

“It was. She was.” Kili shrugged his shoulders in his leather jacket. “She married an injured soldier who had bits from a shell in his chest. Vili. Apparently the doctors said he’d never recover, and, well, he didn’t. He died three years after the war ended, up in the Grey Mountains. Apparently Thorin begged and pleaded for her to come home so he could look after her and Fili, but she was determined to make it on her own. She did for a couple of years, but then I killed her." He said it so bluntly that Bilbo gasped and looked over at him. "When I was born," Kili explained. "I was early, very early, and something went wrong and..." He shrugged. “She’s dead. I never knew her."

"Oh." Bilbo didn't know what to say. “I'm so sorry, Kili." He was reminded of his own mother then, loving, gentle and kind and yet fiercely protective of her little boy, no matter what he'd done. He couldn't imagine life without her in it, how he would have turned out if not for her. No wonder Kili acted out all the time – he was rootless.

"We got on all right in the end. Thorin tracked us down and managed to get custody of us from the state, not that I think it was ever really a fight. Frerin had died in the war before I was born, and Grandfather died when I was ten, and ever since, it's just been the three of us." Kili went quiet again and Bilbo took it to mean that he had finished his family history.

It wasn't until they were half a mile from the edge of the ruins that Bilbo realised what it was that Kili refused to say.

* * *

“Phew,” Kili craned his neck to see, shaking his head. “Did you _ever_ see anything like it?”

“Don’t get too close.” Fili warned his brother, squeezing his shoulder. He still wore his military browns and greens beneath a heavy grey coat. His breath misted briefly in the air before the wind broke it and flung it away. “These mouldy old ruins can be a death trap, especially if they haven’t been touched in so long. And don’t leave anything behind, not even footprints. Don’t go inside any of the buildings, and don’t go down any narrow streets.”

“All right, _uncle_.” Kili rolled his dark eyes. The collar of his leather jacket was turned up against the chill and he kicked at the crumbling paved path beneath his feet, loitering and unsure. Bilbo stood beside him with his hands in his pockets. Dale was built into the hillside, a city of stairs and squares and towering buildings that had long collapsed under centuries of wind and rain. Clusters of bushes, stunted in the weather and thin, chilly air, had sprung up around the city’s feet, some blossoming in pale lemon-yellow and milk-white flowers as small as a fingernail, but it was otherwise unclaimed by nature and remained in a sort of frozen preservation, clinging to the rocky, ugly valley.

“It looks almost Eastern, doesn’t it?” Ori piped up, walking with the metal detector still slung over his shoulder. “Like we’re on the edge of Rhûn, not an hour out from the Greenwood.”

Bilbo followed him, trying to make out any sign or carving, any piece of surviving language. “The people of Dale were Eastern by history. In the Third Age, the nearest kingdom of men was hundreds of miles away.”

“So, Bilbo, what is it exactly that we’re looking for?” Kili ignored the path that wound in a zig-zag up the hill and clambered over the rocks. “Gold? Gems? A nice fat history book talking all about the rise of Erebor?”

Bilbo laughed. “That will all be long gone. Archeologists have been coming here up until about a hundred years ago, so I don’t think there’s be all that much left. Tools would be a big help, if we could tell they were dwarvish-made. Pottery is always distinctive. Anything you see with runes on it, you tell me and I’ll come take a look. If we can find evidence that they were trading with a wealthy tribe of dwarves, then that’s a very good start.”

He knew, of course, that the chance of finding anything was slim to none, but Bilbo still felt a flutter of excitement in his chest as he made his way towards the broken haphazard rows of crumbling ruins. How amazing would it be to catch a sign, to see that this was _here,_ it was real, and for Bilbo to be the very one to uncover and decipher it? It still seemed a wild impossibility to him, one that could never be reconciled in his head. It still felt like a dream, this mountainside camp, and being here in Dale, amongst the ruins that he could almost stretch out and touch if he wanted, brought him crashing into a reality he never dared to believe with a dizzying jolt that left his stomach churning. _Calm yourself!_ Bilbo shook his head. He was yet to find a thing but already the images of glory, of fame, of _recognition_ , were racing through his head.

They picked around for about an hour, examining from a distance as much as they dared. Bilbo ignored Fili’s calls to stay back (after all, _he_ was under no instruction by Thorin Oakenshield to keep his nose out it) and ducked inside a large main hall, one with only half a roof and gaping maws where windows used to be. Bilbo used an electric torch to examine the shadowy corners, picking his way as carefully as he could through the rubble.

“Bilbo, come _out_ of there!” Fili’s voice echoed in the abandoned hall, and Bilbo winced. He checked the walls, searching for some sort of clue. The walls were mostly faded and worn smooth from the weather, but there was a frieze on the back beneath what was left of the roof, certainly Third Age at the latest, judging from the style and proportions. The figures had that clumsy, pre-Fifth Age shortness in the limbs, stiff and unnatural with flat, blocky colours. It looked like some sort of procession, with lutes and fiddles and flutes, with some of the figures armed for battle. There were shorter figures in the frieze alongside the taller, bearing axes, and with a frown, Bilbo stepped closer. They looked at first like children, but they had, upon further inspection, very thick waist-length beards, painted with intricate armour and shields in colours that looked like they might have once been silver and gold.

“Yvanna,” Bilbo gasped, curling his bare toes. “Fili, Kili, Ori,” he looked over his shoulder. “You need to see this!”

“Look, will you get _out!_ Half the roof’s already caved in. There’s nothing to hold the walls up. What if it all came down while you’re in there?” Fili’s anxious voice piped up outside.

“Oh, pack it in brother.” Kili’s loud voice rose as he stepped inside. “If Bilbo’s in, it must be all right.”

“Hey, I _just_ said to stay out!” Fili came in behind him, rapidly, and there was a bit of a tussle as Fili tried to haul his brother out and Kili snapped at him to lay off and Fili said he was being a brat and this was why Thorin didn’t want him coming near here in the first place–

“Fili,” Bilbo’s sombre voice made them both fall still, “Kili,” He took in a deep breath. “Look.” Slowly, he ran the torch along the back wall, showing the faded procession, the maidens in flowing gowns and the warriors in full armour and the dwarves marching in line as though they utterly belonged.

“ _Whoa.”_ Kili stomped closer, glass crunching beneath his feet. “That is– Ori, come check this out–”

“I’m here.” Ori said quietly, standing behind Fili. He was transfixed. They all were, staring at the ancient, beautiful mural with shock and wonder.

“Dwarves.” Kili punched the air. “ _Look!_ Definitely dwarves. This is _awesome!_ ”

“That they are.” Fili murmured. “Look, none of us have a camera, so let’s just leave for now and come back. These old building give me the shivers.”

Regretfully, they stepped outside. Bilbo, realising he’d tested Fili’s patience quite enough, kept to the streets as they wove in and out, kicking around in the square. Ori got the metal detector out and swept the ground before him. It stuttered and whirred loudly like a broken wireless which gave Bilbo a headache and his feet were starting to hurt from all the walking, so he sat down on a stone wall that looked sturdy enough, built into the wall and made from large, solid white bricks. Fili wandered about too, but joined him shortly, lighting a cigarette and leaning back one hand, staring vacantly at the lifeless landscape. Bilbo tried, he really did, to keep the conversation as light and breezy as he could, ignoring the story that Kili had told him, about his secret, but it grew too much, and as Fili drifted into a rather pensive silence, Bilbo found himself clearing his throat and squaring his shoulders, ready to dive into a potentially uncomfortable situation.

“Er, Fili,” _Stop it! Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop!_ “Can I ask you something?”

“Hm? Sure.” Fili sat up and stubbed out his cigarette on the stone before putting it in his pocket. “What’s on your mind, Mr Baggins?”

“Bilbo, please.” He took a deep breath. “I– Well, I had an interesting conversation with Kili this morning–”

“Oh, I’m sure you did.”

“–and I just wanted to ask about it.” He twiddled his thumbs in his lap. Fili opened his pack and pulled out his army-issue canteen, taking a big gulp.

“Mm, go on. I’ll do my best, not that I’m much of an expert as to what goes on in the kid's head sometimes.”

“It’s not his head so much as his past. Your past. Please, if you think I’m being rude and nosey, just tell me to shut it and I will.” Bilbo spread his hands over his thighs, looking determinedly down at his knuckles. “Kili told me today about your mother and father.”

“My father or his?” Fili raised an eyebrow, confirming everything that Bilbo suspected to be true.

“Ah, thought so.” He said quietly. “Did you… Ever know him? Or meet him?”

“Kili’s father?” Fili didn’t sound affronted at all with the question. He rolled it around in his head, looking thoughtful. “I was really young, and to be honest I don’t remember much of anything that _happened_ , just an overall picture, you know? Did he tell you about Mama living by herself in the Grey Mountains?” Bilbo nodded. “Well, I remember we had a room in a boarding house and there were rats in the walls and cockroaches under the floorboards, but I was never scared of ‘em. The landlady was a powerful big woman, an orc. I think something happened with her husband, but anyway she took in mostly single mothers and women on the run. There were quite a lot of kids, all types, and I made friends with some of them. No other dwarves, though." He swung his legs on the wall. "She wasn't taken advantage of, if that's what you're getting at. That's one thing I do remember clearly; she was pregnant, and one night we were walking home and this vagrant pulled a knife on Mama and demanded all her money. She broke his arm." Fili chuckled and shook his head. “Nothing could hurt her."

Bilbo kept staring down at his hands. "She sounds wonderful." He murmured.

Fili nodded. "I miss her everyday." He fell silent for several pensive moments before breaking into an awkward laugh. "Listen to me running my mouth. I'm sorry. Our people, they don't like to talk about her after what she did. Thorin hasn't mentioned her in years, and it's not often people ask to hear about her."

"If there's one thing dwarves are good at, it's keeping secrets." Bilbo stared out at the ruins, stones broken and jagged and crumbling, sticking up like a row of massive teeth.

"Isn't that the truth." Fili sighed and stood up. "Come on, let's find the boys before they tumble down a blasted ravine."

They found them all right. They were in the backyard of a house that had been reduced to its foundations. The yard, just twenty or so feet across, was once paved, but now uneven and cracked and covered with gravelly dirt and bits of scrub here and there. Kili had lifted the pavers and was digging down into dirt beneath, a dry, brittle mustard yellow that crumbled beneath the blade of his shovel. Ori stood above him with the metal detector, which was letting off a screeching intermittent beep.

“ _Kili!”_ Fili shouted, running across the square. “What the hell do you think you’re _doing,_ you fool? You aren’t to touch anything!”

“Oh, calm down.” Kili grinned, knee-deep in the hole he’d made. “It’s all right isn’t it, Ori?”

“Fili, look.” Ori gestured. “There’s definitely something down there. My detector’s going haywire. And we checked the paver, and it was loose, not cemented in with the rest at all.”

“Storage.” Bilbo came up behind them, frowning. “Somebody’s hiding something.”

“Yep. Something big and made of metal.” Kili beamed up at him, dirt somehow smeared on his cheek. “Maybe we’ll get our gold after all.”

Fili ended up taking over the digging, insisting that Kili would probably break the thing in half, the way he was spearing that shovel, and when the hole was about thigh deep, Ori tested the ground. The squeal was deafening; whatever was buried, it was inches beneath a layer of crumbling dirt. Fili ended up sifting with his hands, Bilbo, Ori and Kili peering down and blocking out all the light, until finally he let out a jubilant cry, he stood up, holding a small earthenware jar in his hands. It looked like it held about two pint’s worth, caved with dirt and almost indistinguishable from the small rocks he’d been pulling out on occasion.

“Is that it?” Kili’s shoulders slumped in visible disappointment. Fili set the jar on the ground and the others knelt down around it, afraid almost to touch it, lest it break.

“Mr Baggins, you know how to deal with this sort of thing.” Ori whispered. “You open it.”

Bilbo faltered. He opened his mouth to say that actually, he never really got to _examine_ any ancient pieces on his university dig – and all he did was potter around in the dirt and his professor took everything away to study, but at the sight of peaky, nervous enjoyment on Ori’s face, all Bilbo could do was smile. “Has anyone got a knife?”

“Here, borrow my Lossarnach.” Kili handed over a smart utility blade with a dozen different fittings. Trying to look like the expert he was hired to be, Bibo worked at the crust of dirt around the rim of the jar. Dark crescents formed under his nails. When he was sure the lid was free, Bilbo wiped the knife on his breeches and handed it back, holding his breath. Ori had switched the metal detector off, and there was only the wind whispering around them as everyone leaned in, too scared to talk or breathe. The lid came away, uncracked, and Bilbo put his hand inside, unsure of what he might find but achingly curious to know. He touched metal, ice-cold after its long, long entombment, ridged and grooved in flat, round disks. They were coins.

Bilbo’s hand shook as he pulled it out. It was a heavy coin, perhaps half an ounce, in a perfect circle. An intricate raven in full flight was stamped upon it, as elegant and detailed as the modern shillings he had in his own pocket. Bilbo turned it over and held it flat in his palm. There was a collective gasp at the profile, the reigning monarch. It was an elderly king, with a massive beard and nose that stuck four inches out from his face and a heavy, geometric crown upon his head.

“ _Mahal,_ ” Fili whispered, a hand over his mouth. “What does it say?” He was talking about the runes that ran around the edge. Bilbo looked at him and swallowed hard.

“Thror, King of Durin’s Folk, Th-Third Age, 2750.” Bilbo’s hand curled around the gold, heart pounding.

“ _Yes!_ ” Kili crowed. “Durin’s Folk, that’s us! Fili– Fili, it’s _him–”_

“I don’t believe it.” Fili reached inside and pulled out a fistful of gold, staring down at it. “I-It’s not possible.”

“Look, it’s not all Thror.” Kili upended the jar and gold spilled out over the dirty courtyard. “These ones look _Eastern_. See, look at the script. And on the back, it’s one of those Mûmakuls. They’ve been extinct for centuries. And here, there’s another dwarvish one but it’s got the mountain on it.” Kili held the coin at arm’s length in the direction of Erebor, comparing. “Yep, that’s _definitely_ the same mountain. They must have come from here!”

“This one is a man.” Ori picked one up, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. “Girion, Lord of Dale. And there’s a bird on the back. I don’t recognise it.”

“It’s a thrush.” Bilbo’s voice was dry. “We have loads of them in the Shire.” He stared down at the gold, at least fifty pieces scattered in front of them. “The men of Dale and the dwarves of Erebor knew each other, all right.”

Fili locked eyes with Bilbo. “And if Thror had his own mint…”

“...he was a king indeed.” Bilbo finished, nodding his head.

Bilbo and Ori carefully wiped the coins down and replaced the lid while Fili and Kili filled in the hole as best they could, jumping on the dirt to try and pack it in. They replaced the pavers and kicked the remaining earth around, hoping the rain would wash it away in the next few weeks, and called it a day. Fili wrapped the jar carefully in a spare jumper and the four of them set off, dirty and tired but undeniably elated at what they had found. The frieze on the wall and the jar of gold, it was _proof_ that they weren’t chasing a dead end, that there was something underneath that mountain that had trickled down to this abandoned city. It proved that dwarves had a past, that once upon a time they were as noble and great as any kingdom of elves and men. And in a society so fixed on the past, ruled by a king who had held power for literally centuries and centuries, Bilbo knew just how valuable that knowledge could be for a people who had endured nothing but hardship and subjugation in their cultural memory.

Halfway back to camp, when they were crossing the bed of an open valley, a plane approached. Fili heard the distant hum first of all, grabbed his brother’s arm and hissed for everyone to get down. There weren’t any rocks to hide behind or crevices to dash into, so he pulled the big blanket out from his bag and huddled for everyone to get together.

“You’re wasting your time, you know.” Kili muttered underneath the blanket. Bilbo watched his outline as he curled up with chin on his pack, hugged close to his chest. “Listen.” The hum grew louder, a dull throb that got down into Bilbo’s bones. “That’s a jumbo jet, probably an Eärrámë 450. Sound real big. They’ll be flying about thirty or forty thousand feet. There’s no _way_ they’ll ever see us.”

“Smart-aleck.” Fili shot back. “Better to be safe than sorry, anyway.”

“You know about planes?” Bilbo inquired, rather surprised.

Kili nodded. “Mm-hm, all about them. I’m gonna be a pilot one day.” There was a flash of white as he grinned. Fili was staring at the ground with a hard expression on his face, one that explained itself after the rumbling had died away and he folded up the blanket and continued walking.

“He can’t be a pilot.” Fili muttered in Bilbo’s ear as soon as Kili was safely out of earshot.

“I know he’s a bit, well, flighty, but if he puts his head down and works at it–”

“No, I mean, he _can’t._ ” Fili sighed heavily. “It’s his eyes. We dwarves are barred from even training for the licence because our eyes are so bad. So if he talks about it, just smile and nod, OK? Don’t engage or give him false hope.”

“O-Oh.” Bilbo felt a rush of pity at that, an ache that started in his gut and spread into his chest. It was a pity tinged with empathy. He knew what it was like to have his dreams snuffed out before they could ever hope to come true. “That’s… that’s a darn shame.”

* * *

They made it back in the late afternoon, when the sun was low and buttery and their shadows stretched out ten feet behind them. The others greeted them with cheerful waves and grunts, and Bilbo and the young dwarves gave nothing away. They had decided to hand the gold over to Thorin and let him decide where to go from there.

Thorin, of course, was sitting at his desk, reading over some with that irritatingly attractive frown that creased his forehead and wrinkled his mouth just so. He looked up, mildly interested, as the four trooped in, still sweaty and dirty from their rather excitable and brisk walk back to camp.

“How was it?” Thorin put down his pen. “Didn’t make a mess, I hope.”

“Well–”

“No, uncle, of course not.” Fili cut over his brother. “We, er, actually found something interesting. Very interesting.” He swung his pack over his shoulder and fished out his bundled jumper. “Bilbo, you show him.” He pushed it into Bilbo’s chest.

“Me?” Bilbo squeaked. It was surprisingly _heavy_ from the gold, and Bilbo didn’t know how long he could hold it for.

“You were the one who wanted to go to Dale in the first place. This was your find.”

“But it was Ori’s metal detector–”

“Oh, for goodness sake, Mr Baggins, just show me what you found.” Thorin cut him off, rolling his brilliant blue eyes.

“Well, all right.” Bilbo set it down on the desk and pulled the jumper away. It was unassuming, squat and plain and getting flaky dirt all over Thorin’s papers.

“A jar?” Thorin frowned. “You found a jar?”

“Not just any jar.” Bilbo’s heart surged as he pulled off the lid and tipped it on his side. Half a dozen coins spilled out, gleaming in the yellow light of Thorin’s lantern. “A jar full of gold. Dwarvish gold, some of it, dating back to the late Third Age.”

Thorin stared open-mouthed at the gold, looking, for the first time Bilbo had ever seen him, completely and utterly lost for words. He picked up one of the coins, turned it over and stared at Thror’s hard profile, a knot bobbing obviously in his throat.

“Do you know what this means?” He whispered faintly, looking at all of them with wide eyes. “This is _proof_. This is the first step.” His knuckles white around the gold, Thorin’s face broke into a wide grin and he stepped forward. He _hugged_ Bilbo, embraced him with a fierceness that squeezed the air out of his lungs. Bilbo closed his eyes, feeling for a moment those strong arms around him, the sensation of Thorin’s loose hair falling over his shoulders, that achingly, shiveringly-sweet, whisper-soft brush of his beard as their cheeks touched for the briefest moments, the feeling of their chests pressed together, and– was that his hip bone? Bilbo could _smell_ him, his expensive aftershave and the oil that kept his beard soft and full, his skin, _his_ smell, Thorin, deep and heady and wild, and it sent a shudder down Bilbo’s spine that went all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes. And all too soon – although it felt in those delicious, sweet moments that they had been embracing for hours – Thorin pulled away, looking, in his own subdued way, shocked and embarrassed at what he’d done in his rush of joy.

“Well, thank you, Mr Baggins.” He held Bilbo’s arms for a moment and then let go, clearing his throat. “Yes, thank you. This is excellent.” Bilbo touched his cheek, where Thorin’s had brushed his, and felt his skin flushed beneath his fingertips. He must have looked a sight, like a red-faced schoolgirl sighing over her unbidden sweetheart, and forced a look of restrained bemusement on his face, as though what Thorin had done was quite funny, rather than soul-shatteringly glorious. “All of you, Fili, Bilbo, Ori.” Thorn sank into his seat, turning another coin over and over in his trembling hands. “It must almost be supper. You must be hungry after your tramp. Go, get something to eat and wrap up warm.” He shook his head a little like someone trying to clear their head of a hazy daydream. “I’ll take care of this. Oh,” he raised his voice a little as Fili, Kili and Ori made to leave, “try to keep this between us for now, hm? I’ll organise this and inform the others as I see fit.”

“Of course, uncle.” Fili left with Kili and Ori in tow. “Come on, you lot. I could eat a horse.”

“Told you we should have pilfered some bread before we left.” Kili remarked as they traipsed outside. Bilbo turned and went to join them when a thought struck him, and he turned back, wringing his hands a little and trying to soothe his racing breath and heart rate enough to convincingly act as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“Er, Thorin?” Thorin, who was examining the dwarvish coin, looked up. “Just so you know, the Khuzdul, it says, ‘Thror, King of Durin’s Folk, Third Age, 2750'. Well, some of the years may be different, but it’s all around that time.”

“Thank you, Mr Baggins.” There was a smile, a real one, and it was directed at _him,_ and Bilbo felt himself coming over all hot and sickly again. “Oh, and about before–”

“Oh, that?” Bilbo flapped his hand. “No matter. Heat of the moment and all that. I’ll forget all about it.”

“Thank you.” Thorin nodded, the smile returning to his face after the brief falter. “Now go, get something to eat before my nephews eat every last drop. You’d think I never fed them.”

“You come and get something too.” Bilbo offered. “You look like you need to eat. And rest.”

“I’ll be all right.” The smile faded, and Thorin was Thorin again, businesslike and to the point as he swept up the coins and returned them to their little earthenware coffin. “Go, Mr Baggins. And thank you again.”

“Any time, Thorin.” Bilbo left with his forehead slick and legs resembling unset custard, thinking it was a miracle that he didn’t collapse in the dust altogether after what Thorin had done.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Bilbo waited. He continued to read and make notes in the mornings and while away his afternoons with the younger dwarves. Three days passed since they uncovered the gold. Three times, the miners left in the dawn to work their drills and other such machinery that Bilbo could sometimes hear echoing in the valley, and in the evenings they returned, dusty and tired and empty-handed. Soon, they muttered over their soups and stews, they would pierce Erebor’s stone shield and uncover what was inside. The weather grew gloomy and miserable, drizzling throughout the day and blowing a damp, unpleasant wind that stuck the curls to his face, so Bilbo stayed inside, playing cards, listening to Kili’s music (not really his taste, but some of the softer stuff was quite nice) and rereading his few books. A sense of restlessness had settled over the camp, and even Thorin seemed to have lost focus. He took to pacing sometimes in their shared tent, tapped his pen against the paper for minutes at a time, and wound up staring at the wall with his work lying before him, unattended.

After his lunch of a thick slice of bread with butter and blackberry jam and a steaming mug of Turondo, Bilbo went back to find the tent empty. The telegraph was clicking, spitting out a thin ribbon of paper, and he went back out into the wind to find Thorin. He wasn’t in the mess tent, so with some trepidation, Bilbo approached the small private tent at the end of the row. The flap was tied back, so Bilbo ducked his head in.

“Thorin?” He squeaked. Thorin was sitting up on the edge of his stretcher, feet flat on the floor, reading by the light of an electric lantern. It was still the hardback Milven novel, although he looked very close to the end, and Thorin seemed started at the interruption, blinking. “Oh, I-I’m sorry.” Bilbo winced. “I didn’t realise you were busy.”

“Just a reading break.” Thorin lowered the book. “Did you need something?”

“Oh, well, the telegraph’s just spitting out a message for you. It looks quite long, but I’m sure it’s not urgent.”

“May as well take a look.” Regretfully, Thorin bookmarked the novel and laid it on his neatly-made bed.

“Is the novel still good?” Bilbo asked as Thorin stepped out of his tent. “You’ve worked through it quickly.”

“Yes, it is.” Thorin spoke and walked briskly, Bilbo struggling to keep pace. “You were right back in Olvath. His recent works aren’t the best, but he’s back on form.”

“I shall have to read it then.” Bilbo smiled, but Thorin gave only a grunt in return as he entered the communications tent and approached the telegraph. Heaving a long sigh, Bilbo glared at Thorin’s back, feeling annoyed and a little put out. “Perhaps when you’re finished–”

“Oh, _bloody_ hell!” Thorin snapped, passing the tape through his fingers. “Incompetent twits.” He threw himself into the stool and jammed the headphones on over his long curls, furiously tapping out a message. With his shoulders slumped, Bilbo left him.

He found Kili bent over the Ashpar, the bonnet popped and an open toolbox in the dirt. The ground around him was littered with bits of engine and spots of oil. “Oh, hi, Bilbo!” Hearing the hobbit approach, Kili looked up with a grin. There was a smear of black grease over his cheek and his hair was pulled back from his face in a loose ponytail. “You look down. Nothing for lunch today?”

“Hm? No, not that.” Bilbo approached him and leaned his elbows on the edge of the car, peering in. “Just… restless, I s’pose.” He curled his bare toes in the dust. “What are you doing? I didn’t know the truck was broken.”

“Well, she’s going all right, but Dwalin reckoned there was a weird crunch when he hit the brakes. _I_ think it’s ‘cause he drives like a lunatic, but I said I’d take a look. Brake pads look all right, so it’s gotta be something in the engine. Don’t know what though…” Kili tapped the wrench in his hand against one of the thick hoses, chewing on his lower lip in thought.

“I didn’t realise you knew about cars.” Bilbo watched as Kili dropped to his knees and rifle through the toolbox.

“Mm? Oh yeah, lots. Thorin reckons it’s about the only thing I’m any good at. I used to be an apprentice for a mechanic, you know, back in Olvath. But he was a right git, gave me all the bum jobs, and kept thinking I was touched in the head. Never let me near the cars.” A fresh wrench in his hand, Kili started unscrewing the connection bolt of a hose. “I spent six months wiping the grease off bolts and sweeping up and shifting tyres about. Didn’t even trust me to change an oil filter. Then one day the lav blocked up and he wanted me to sort it out. Me! I told him to stick his plunger up his arse and walked out.” Kili sniggered. “Thorin wasn’t too happy, though. Said he had to pull a lot of strings to get me that job, what with my record.”

“Record?” Bilbo echoed. “You mean… with the police?”

“It’s not even that bad.” Kili rolled his eyes. “Just a few misdemeanours, disrupting the peace, trespass, _one_ speeding ticket. I’ve only ever gone to court twice, and both times I just got discharged. The papers love me – MP’s nephew and all that. They try make me out like some kind of hooligan, but it’s not like I’m being done for public indecency or drunk and disorderly. Protesting a factory closure or unjust court ruling isn’t a scandal, not really.” Kili grunted, fiddling with the greasy hose fitting.

“Oh, that’s a shame.” Kili shrugged, finally getting the connection loose and slipping the bolt into his pocket. “I’m sure you’ll find something else.”

“Not the first time my mouth got me into trouble.” Kili dropped to his knees and fished out a metal basin, holding it carefully under the car. The gushing of liquid soon followed. “I was in the army too, you know. Did Fili mention that?”

“No, he didn’t.” Kili came up again, wiping at his face and leaving another black, greasy smear. “How long ago was that?”

“Oh, a few years now. I didn’t last long. They gave me the boot two months into basic training. Insubordination. I– What did the form say exactly? I told my commanding officer to perform sexual relations with a barnyard animal.” Bilbo masked his laughter with a cough. “Thorin was _furious_ at that. Said I shamed the entire family. Wouldn’t talk to me for weeks. But I’m happy. I don’t think I could have stuck it out there anyway, let alone been assigned and all that.”

“Do you get a temper, Kili?” Bilbo had to ask. Kili thought about it for a moment and then shook his head, wiping his greasy hands on his jeans.

“Not a temper. I don’t shout and scream or anything. I just… I can’t put up with it, y’know? So I just walk out. Thorin thinks I’m lazy and that’s why I always quit and Fili’s always telling me to pull my head in, but…” Kili shrugged again, pulling out the basin, now filled with a toxic-looking greenish liquid, and fiddled about under the car again. “I wish… I dunno, I wish people didn’t treat me like this.” Bilbo caught a flash of Kili’s face through the network of pipes and bolts. That breezy smile had faded. “They see me, a dwarf, and think I’m a half-wit or a brute or a violent drunk.” Kili threw his wrench in the direction of the toolbox, where it clattered in the dirt. “I’m not.”

“I think you’re lovely.” Bilbo announced, leaning on his elbows. Kili looked up at him, a little flustered. “You’re by far the most welcoming of anybody here. You’ve been a good friend and very kind to me.”

“You’re pretty swell yourself. I don’t know what Thorin’s problem is.” Bilbo stiffened as Kili got back up, making his nervousness with a half-smile. “I mean, I know he doesn’t like outsiders, but he’s acting like you’re in one of those awful lobby groups or a particularly nasty journalist. He’s _so_ rude.”

“Well,” Bilbo cleared his throat, feeling the shame fill him as his worst fears were finally confirmed; Thorin, indeed, didn’t like him. “I suppose I’m just not the kind of person that he befriends.”

“I don’t knowwhy he’d think that.” Kili set to disconnecting a good half-dozen hoses from what looked like an important piece of the engine (although Bilbo didn’t know the first thing about cars and could only guess). “You both like the same boring old books written by boring old men, you both watch cricket, you both like classical music and fancy food, you both like all that mouldy dead dwarvish stuff, you both went to Rivendell…” Kili trailed off, rolling his eyes. “Thorin is just such a prig, you know?”

“He’s very busy.” Of all of those things Kili had mentioned – the books and sports and music they both liked – Thorin hadn’t spoken to Bilbo about any of them even once. Even saying the latest Milven was good had been a hard-fought struggle of conversation. “We haven’t had time to discuss hobbies.”

“Oh, he’s always like this. When Parliament’s sitting, he’s never home before midnight, if he makes it back at all. I go days without even seeing him sometimes. I tell him to slow down but he just snaps at me and tells me to get a job. His whole life is in politics. It’s his everything.”

“Is that why he never married?” The moment it slipped out of his mouth, Bilbo knew he went too far. Kili stopped and looked up, faltering, eyes darting from side to side in a flash of thought, and he bit his lip.

“Well, yeah.” He coughed and looked very determinedly down at his work. “When I was a kid, he was engaged for a while to this really nice dam who would give me raspberry drops and braided my hair. But, um, I don’t think he loved her. He just wanted someone to be our mother, and who could go with him to those balls and dinners and events he’s always invited to. And to keep a wholesome image, too. Someone like him, a public figure, if he remains a bachelor forever…” Kili trailed off, searching carefully for the next words. “You know how horrid people get.”

“Yes.” Bilbo said, gripping the edge of the car. “I’m well-versed in that experience.”

Bilbo puzzled over his conversation with Kili all afternoon. Kili fixed the truck – rust in the cooling system, he claimed. Just a flush out and a coolant change and she’d be right as rain. Bilbo nodded as if he understood. Afterwards, they played cards and listened to music, sitting at the secluded end of the long table. Thorin came in briefly to make a cup of tea; he watched Kili and Bilbo talk with a frown on his face while he waited for the kettle to boil, and feeling his cheeks redden, Bilbo ignored him.

He wondered what made Thorin so angry before. It was an uncharacteristic flash of rage, one that seemed already to be over although Thorin seemed exceptionally broody when Bilbo walked into their shared tent around four under the pretence of needing a book. He was about to leave when Balin came in, face bright red from the cold, unwinding a scarf from around his neck.

“The lads at the rockface will be done in an hour or so. Doesn’t look like we’ll break through today, but we’re certainly close.” Bilbo hovered awkwardly, listening and feeling like an eavesdropper but at the same time unwilling to push past Balin and break their conversation.

Thorin just grunted though, looking rather sullen, and Balin pulled out the spare stool and sat down. “Everything all right, old chap? You do look glum.”

“Oh, Balin.” Thorin sighed. “I got a telegram from Njir just after lunch. The office received a reminder for the annual Orodrim banquet tomorrow night.”

“I thought you cancelled that weeks ago. You won’t be there.”

“I thought I did, too.” Thorin sounded testy. “Now I’m in a real bind. I can’t decline the day before the dinner, they’ll know something’s up. I’ve gone every year for over a decade, and I’ve had a few odd questions about my whereabouts as it is.”

“So… Are you going or not, then?”

“Of course I’ll have to go. It might be good to be seen in town, at least in the society pages. I just couldn’t think of anything more unappealing right now than a hundred puffed-up hacks and journalists and wish-they-were literary critics.” He grumbled. “The entire thing is a farce.”

“Er, beg pardon,” Bilbo nervously approached the pair. “But are you talking about the Orodrim medal? The literature prize?”

“One and the same.” Thorin sighed. “Next to the opening session in Parliament, it’s the most excruciating and pompous engagement of the year. I haven’t enjoyed myself since Gwendel Manwen won it five years ago.”

“Gwendel Manwen? Oh, her poetry is _fabulous_.” Bilbo squeezed the book close to his chest. “I read an extract of her acceptance speech in the Review. She’s such a good speaker. Plenty of writers aren’t. You were so lucky to be there.”

The corner of Thorin’s lip twitched. “She’s much wittier in person than people realise. The shortlist this year is full of dusty old elves and men, sadly. It’s bound to be awful.”

“Bilbo, you should go.” Balin said quite suddenly. Bilbo squeaked and hugged the book tighter, and Thorin’s brow creased in a frown. “Yes, that’s a lovely idea. He’s a bookseller, Thorin. He knows the field and you won’t have to tough it out alone. And it would be fun for you, wouldn’t it Bilbo?”

“E-Erm,” Bilbo stammered, feeling his heart rush in the excitement and surprise of it. “I-I would be honoured to have the opportunity. I’ve never been invited to any literary events, and the Orodrim medal is the highlight of the year.”

“There, it’s settled.” Balin beamed. Thorin looked as though he wanted to take his lovely Nimras pen and jam it right into his old friend’s neck, but he remained as composed and silent as ever. “You two pop in first thing in the morning, get dressed at Thorin’s house, go to the dinner, Thorin can show Olvath he’s still alive and in the area, rub shoulders with the right folks, then Bob’s your uncle, back to Erebor the next day. We’ll barely notice your absence.” Thorin stood with his arms crossed, glowering at him. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Bilbo?”

Bilbo paused, looking from Balin to Thorin. Thorin was staring back, boring into him with those steely blue eyes. Silently, he was asking Bilbo to decline politely and spare them both the embarrassment. But Bilbo remembered his earlier conversation with Kili, about how much they had in common and how they could be good friends if only Thorin could tear himself away from his word for five blasted minutes and hold a sentence of conversation.

He breathed in. “Yes, Balin,” Bilbo fixed another smile, fingers curling around his book. “I think that’s a marvellous idea.”

* * *

“You’ll be all right.” Balin caught Bilbo the next morning while he was sorting things out in his tent. “I know Thorin can seem a bit prickly sometimes, but he’d never be offensive to you.”

Bilbo, who was gathering up some spare underclothes and his best suit and his shampoo and comb and hand-cream all into a smart overnight bag that Gloin lent him, looked up. Balin was smiling as he took a seat on the edge of the bed, hands clasped between his knees. “I-I know.” He folded up a cotton singlet and placed it carefully on the small pile of clothes. “May I ask you, though, why on earth did you suggest such a madcap idea?”

“Because,” Balin sighed, “I worry about Thorin an awful lot. I really do. He’s working himself to the bone, and I don’t know how much longer he can go without burning out. He’s very isolated, as you may have guessed.” Bilbo bit hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from scoffing. “He has hundreds of associates and acquaintances and colleagues, but very few friends. I think the two of you could be good friends, you know.”

“So you’ve set us up like two children on a play date?” Bilbo set to gathering up his toiletries. Balin chuckled.

“I supposed I did, in a way. I knew he would be too polite to say no if you were interested. But no matter, it’s done now.” Balin stood up. “You don’t have to take his nonsense, you know. If he is ever rude to you, just tell him to stick it. Sometimes he gets a bit stuck up in their in his ivory tower, and it can’t hurt to take him down.” Bilbo grinned at that and zipped the borrowed case closed.

“Well, thank you, Mr Balin.” Bilbo held out his hand and Balin shook it. “I really am grateful for the opportunity.”

The first hour or so was quiet. The Ashpar had a transistor radio, although it only pulled the occasional crackle of static out here in the mountains. Thorin stared at the winding road, driving carefully and steadily with his both hands locked on the steering wheel. Bilbo twiddled his thumbs and stared out the window, casting his mind about for something – anything – to talk about.

“Have you read any books on the shortlist?” He ventured after they turned onto the sealed road and they could talk without shouting. Thorin grunted. “I’ve only read three of them. Gorlak’s, Caen’s and Eldacar’s. I think I like Eldacar’s the best, but I always have a soft spot for historical novels. His Fifth-age Gondor was quite accurate – well, according to the reviews I read.” Bilbo forced a carefree laugh. “I never ventured much further than the Fourth Age in university.”

“The Fourth Age was the last time we were great.” Thorin muttered, still staring at the road. “Back when dwarves still held land and kingdoms and power, before the rest of the world passed us by while we clung to our old ways.”

Bilbo looked over at him. “Well, yes.” Thorin looked so taut and focused. His hair fell unbraided over his shoulders and face and Bilbo tingled with the urge to gently brush it back. “Cultural isolation was their biggest downfall. I do believe the dwarves were the most technologically advanced race on the planet, once upon a time. I remember coming across a manuscript with some equations and physics in my third year, all Khuzdhul. It had been formally dated to early Fifth Age, but the language just didn’t match up. It still had voiced dentals, which were mostly voiceless by the mid-Fourth Age, and the vowels hadn’t rounded yet, and there were a heap of older morphological forms. I asked my professor about it, and he said he’d take a look, but I don’t think he ever did, and I quite forgot about it.” Thorin took his eyes off the road to look at him for a split second.

“So when do you think this manuscript had been written?” Thorin asked, a different note in his voice, less tense and closed-off than he had been before. He was curious.

“Third Age, without a doubt. It was Eastern, which is always a bit harder to date, but I know my Third-age Khzudhul and it was a perfect example. ‘Course, I’m not sure when the mathematics in the book were supposed to have originated. I was going to revisit the text and make a journal submission from it after I had completed my doctorate, but…” Bilbo awkwardly trailed off. “ A shame, but someone shall pick it up again, I suppose.”

“One can only hope.” Thorin sounded annoyed again. Bilbo, realising he’d made a blunder in mentioning a potentially history-making discovery that he’d abandoned twenty years before, fell silent once more.

The transistor finally picked up a frequency when they got onto the main highway. It was a classical station, slightly garbled and fuzzy in the mountain air. It was enough to get them talking briefly about music – Thorin liked a good philharmonic best, but Bilbo preferred the opera – and it was mutually decided that the best composers were from the Osgiliath school in the early Sixth Age. They recommended a couple of movements to one another and then promptly forgot them. By the time they were on the urban M3 and the traffic had built up, Bilbo was feeling tentatively hopeful about this whole dinner business and resolved to make Thorin smile at least once by the end of the night.

Once they were at Thorin’s modest townhouse in Rock Hill, conversation, stilted though it was, had drifted from composers to artists they liked and then to museums and historical buildings and inevitably to Rivendell. “I did my Bachelor of Laws when I was fresh out of school,” Thorin explained as he pulled the car into the driveway. “I wanted to stay on and do a Master’s looking into the civil rights of dwarves, but then the Forodwaith Wars happened and I was conscripted.” Bilbo listened as they got out of the car and approached the front door. “Six years later, I wasn’t all that interested in books and papers anymore.”

“Did you practise?” Bilbo asked as they stepped inside, viciously eating up every word.

A growl rumbled in Thorin’s throat. “I tried. I made the bar, but finding work was a real struggle. Eventually I worked as a part-time clerk in a shabby downtown firm. It was all two-bit cases – shady businessmen who were caught on the wrong side of the law and such like. I stuck it out for a few years, but when it became clear I’d never be promoted, I moved into public defense. They’ll take anybody.”

“Why didn’t they promote you?” They walked slowly up the stairs. Thorin looked over his shoulder at him, one heavy eyebrow raised.

“Dwarves don’t command much of a presence in the courtroom.” He sounded frosty, and Bilbo hid a wince. “My father was unhappy. He wanted me to be an estate lawyer, and have a wealthy clientele, but going public was the best decision I ever made. I founded the Social Democrat Party with a number of colleagues, worked to build up a following, and finally won East Duilwen.” Thorin stood in the doorway of his bedroom. “Now you know my life story, Mr Baggins. I hope it is of interest to you.” It was a half-hearted attempt at being snarky, and Bilbo didn’t buy it.

“It is.” he flashed another grin. “Your memoirs will be riveting, when the time comes.”

Thorin faltered at that, obviously hoping for some sort of red-faced stammer. Immediately regaining his composure, he opened his bedroom door. “Show me your suit.” He said crisply, one hand still on the doorknob. “Tonight will be black tie, and you must look the part.”

Bilbo looked apologetic as he pulled out his worsted suit of dark brown with a matching waistcoat. “Sorry.”

“No matter,” Thorin entered his bedroom and beckoned him in. “I have several suits that should almost fit. I can tack up the arms and legs.” He pulled out a fitted tuxedo from his wardrobe. “Try this one on. It should do.” Thorin pushed it into Bilbo’s chest, gesturing to the open door. Bilbo took the garment into Fili-and-Kili’s room (although, really, it was mostly Kili’s) and carefully tried it on, wearing his own best white shirt underneath. He looked ridiculous. Although the trousers _just_ fitted around the waist, the trousers bunched at his ankles and the jacket fell an inch past his fingertips. He looked like a child playing dress-up. Bilbo shuffled into the main bedroom where Thorin waited, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“I’m afraid I look rather silly.” Bilbo held up his hands. Thorin looked him up and down, and for a moment, Bilbo thought he caught the glimpse of a smile, but Thorin bit it back and resumed his usual chilly, unreadable expression.

“No sillier than if you showed up in that woollen monstrosity.” Thorin approached him and took his shoulders, feeling the seams. “It seems to fit the torso fine. It’s just the arms and legs that are long.” He opened the top drawer of his dresser, one of those little ones beneath the mirror that held things like hankies and spare buttons. Thorin pulled out a little packet of pearl-topped pins. “Stand with your feet slightly apart.”

“A-All right.” Bilbo held his breath as Thorin dropped down on his knees in front of him, his dark head bent. He balled his hands into fists at his side and his heart jumped as Thorin gently touched his left ankle, trying to the trouser leg inside itself and pin it in place. Bilbo squeezed his eyes shut and counted to ten and then back down again as Thorin repeated the process, feeling the sweat break out beneath the soft curls over his forehead.

“Hm, let me check.” Bilbo squeaked as Thorin unbuttoned the front jacked and dug his thumbs inside his trousers, checking the tightness of it. He clenched his jaw, his hands, his thighs, every muscle of his body and forced himself to remain calm as Thorin ran his thick fingers over the inner waistband of his trousers. He was standing close, too close for Bilbo’s comfort. Close enough to smell him again, that luxurious scent of oils and cologne and Thorin’s own skin lingering underneath. Bilbo’s mouth was bone-dry. “Yes, that should do.” Satisfied, Thorin stepped back. “I won’t need to adjust that.”

“I didn’t realise you could sew.” Thorin had many secrets, but this was the most unexpected. Bilbo carefully breathed out and in and relaxed his hand as Thorin pinned up the left sleeve so it sat just at his wrist.

“I worked at tailor’s one summer at university.” He spoke around three pins in his mouth. “I was constantly fixing clothes for the boys when they were growing up. Kili grew an inch a month for a time, and he was making holes in his trousers whenever he had the chance.” Yes, Bilbo could see that perfectly in his mind’s eye; skinny, awkward, too-tall Kili with perpetually scraped knees.

Somehow, Bilbo survived the fitting and the pinning. He carefully redressed in his own simple clothes while Thorin took the suit down to the sitting room. When Bilbo came down after thoroughly rinsing his face with ice-cold water in the bathroom sink and making sure his heart had completely returned to normal, Thorin was half-watching a political talk show on the television, a cup of coffee on the table in front of him.

Why was Thorin being so nice all of a sudden? Bilbo contemplated it while pretending to watch the television, resting with his elbow on the arm of the couch. Did he really mean it, or was he going through these efforts just to be polite? Bilbo longed to ask him. Maybe he had finally realised how rude he was being and this was some sort of apology (a pretty poor one if that was the case; it wasn’t unreasonable to expect basic kindness). Maybe he realised that they were going to have to be spending a lot of time together over these few days, and it was best to be civil with one another rather than at odds.

Either way, Bilbo resolved to take full advantage of it while he could.   

 


	9. Chapter 9

After fifteen or so minutes, Thorin set down the half-hemmed trouser leg and slipped away. Bilbo, still leaning on his elbow, looked up with a, “Is everything all…” but Thorin had already exited the room. Bilbo sighed and tried to pay attention to the television, but it was a report on the price of wool and desperately boring. He was about to stand up and peruse the bookshelf when Thorin came back, a thick novel in one hand.

“I don’t lend my books out as a rule,” Thorin warned, holding it out. It was his half-read Milven. _By The Sea_ was printed on the spine in smart gold letting, the redcloth book otherwise plain and unassuming. “So please, don’t get it dirty or dog-ear the pages or lose my place.”

“Oh, I won’t!” Bilbo beamed. “Thank you ever so much. I looked in the village by Erebor, but they didn’t have it in stock. They didn’t have much of anything.”

“Unsurprising.” Thorin muttered. “It’s a very new release. I only bought it a few days before we left. Argus will probably be in attendance tonight, and I wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed.”

“Thank you?” Bilbo accepted the book all the same. He thought it rude to put his large, leathery feet on the coffee table, so he curled up, nestling against the arm of the couch, opening the book in his lap. It was formidably large, at least five hundred pages, and as he opened the novel, Bilbo saw it was a small, almost cramped type, with slim margins. No wonder it had taken the ageing author six years to write it.

From the second paragraph, Bilbo was hooked. By the end of the first chapter, he was reading viciously, utterly ignoring the drone of the television and the near-silent hiss of Thorin’s breath. Part character study, part murder-mystery, part romance, Bilbo became utterly absorbed in the eclectic cast — the dead girl who existed only in letters and memory, the milkman’s son who claimed to be in love with her, the retired detective obsessed with the case, the girl’s fanatic father and alcoholic mother, the law student who had been sent down for the semester and was the last one to see her alive — and the wild coastal town that existed as an untouched relic of a pre-industrial life.

Thorin’s touch on his arm came as a shock. Bilbo blinked, feeling sluggish and drowsy, his mind pressed like a withered flower between the pages of the book. “I’ve finished the alterations.” He said shortly, the suit slung over one broad arm. “We’ll be getting picked up a couple of hours, so wash and get dressed. You can have the first bath. Take your overnight bag and leave it in the car; I tend to stay in a hotel for things like this. They tend to run very late, and I imagine tonight won’t be an exception.”

“A-All right.” Bilbo looked down at the novel, realising he didn’t have a bookmark. Page 158, he told himself, repeating it over and over in his head, committing it to memory. As he set the book down on the coffee table, Bilbo glanced at the clock and realised he’d been reading for nearly two solid hours. No wonder his neck was so stiff. “It’s stunning.” Bilbo gestured at the book as he stood up. “You’re right. He is on form.”

Thorin’s lip twitched. “I won’t tell you what happens at the end,” He promised, holding out the suit. “But it’s certainly unexpected. Get dressed in Kili’s room.”

After his bath, Bilbo changed quickly, the eyes of Kili’s posters on him. It was disconcerting. He kept his gaze fixed on the mirror, watching his own body transform beneath a veil of starched and stiff white and black, fiddling with buttons and buckles and fastenings. He couldn’t figure out the bowtie, so he emerged with it undone at his neck, standing awkwardly in the hallway as he heard the shift and rustle of cloth on skin through the closed door.

“Er, Thorin—”

“I’m getting dressed.” Came the curt reply. “Wait downstairs.”

Afraid to sit down, Bilbo paced back and forth in the sitting room, wishing he had pockets to put his hands in. He found himself staring at the picture of Thorin again — the boy-soldier with the regulation haircut, stern and proud, misty with age, and the brother beside him. He had died in the war, Bilbo remembered. Kili had mentioned his uncle only in passing, and Thorin and Fili not at all. Which was strange, come to think of it. Dying in battle was an ancient privilege, and while men and orcs tended to visit the subject with a heady grief, dwarves still held a sense of pride. It was a family honour, to make that sacrifice for one’s kin and people. Bilbo frowned at the photograph. Then again, Thorin and his family didn’t seem too attached to tradition.

“Did they not teach you how to tie a bow in Rivendell?” Bilbo jumped at the voice. Thorin emerged in his own tuxedo, impeccably tailored without a crease or wrinkle to be seen. His hair was freshly washed and combed and braided back from his face, which assumed that typical sardonic, mildly-interested expression. The urge again filled Bilbo slowly, swelling in his abdomen and pushing down, down through his flanks and into the tips of his toes. He breathed slowly, in and out, and willed himself to speak.

“Er, well, I-It was quite a while ago, and I didn’t...” Bilbo faltered and trailed off when he realised Thorin wasn’t listening. He approached the hobbit with a little scoff and grasped the loose fabric around his neck. Bilbo held his breath, looking determinedly past Thorin and at the flowered wallpaper, a shiver coursing down his spine as his knuckles occasionally brushed the soft underside of Bilbo’s chin. Despite all the internal screams to get a hold of himself and buck up, he could feel his stomach still oozing that warm, fuzzy softness that went right down into his bowels and made his knees weak. Really, Bilbo was being utterly pathetic.

The pair were picked up in a sleek saloon car with a deep, purring engine. It was full-sized, and Bilbo stretched out on the cream leather seat, grinning. While they rumbled along the urban motorway, Thorin gave Bilbo a basic run-down of who to talk to and what to expect and sketched a basic back story — it was decided that Bilbo’s father would be an acquaintance of Thorin’s, and Thorin had politely offered to host Bilbo while he was visiting Olvath for some business matter regarding one of his suppliers.

“Do you normally do this sort of thing, invite would-be strangers into your home and take them out to parties?” It was a humorous jab, but seemed to have offended Thorin. He stared out the window with a scowl, considering the question before giving his terse reply.

“Thankfully, Mr Baggins, most of the tiresome gossips that inhabit these functions know me even less than you do.”

_Suit yourself, then_. Bilbo rolled his eyes at Thorin’s face in profile. He certainly wasn’t going to make this easy by any means.

* * *

They were slightly early. The reception room was perhaps a third full, and Thorin and Bilbo stood near a window, drinking expensive champagne. Thorin pointed out certain persons of interest as they happened past — editor-in-chief of the Gondor Review, a journalist for the MBC news, Professor Emeritus of Westron Literature at Theod College in Edoras, the daughter of the Minister of Cultural Affairs. Often, Thorin didn't bother to give names. Bilbo drank and watched, absorbing as much as he could in a flash of champagne and chandelier lighting.

“Do you come to these things alone?" Bilbo asked rather suddenly. Thorin, who was trying to indicate the speaker of the dinner without actually pointing, stilled. "I-I mean, do you usually bring a companion with you, or do you stand by yourself and watch the crowd past by?"

Thorin visibly bristled. “I have taken numerous acquaintances to this and similar functions when necessary. I am capable of making small talk when I have to." Bilbo masked his surprise in his flute. Was Thorin saying he would rather talk to Bilbo? It wasn't much of a compliment, but given the situation, Bilbo still took it.

"We really don't get these sorts of functions in Hobbiton," Bilbo spoke after a moment of quiet. "The most exciting party I can remember is a charity auction the Historical Preservation Society held two years ago. The mayor's wife ended up having too much to drink and fell down the stairs. Broke her ankle. I was rather tipsy myself; ended up buying a hideous oil painting of the Grey Havens after cousin Lobelia insinuated I was cheap. I ended up gifting it to her on my birthday last year. I expect it will come back to me soon enough."

Thorin chuckled. “I envy you, Bilbo." Bilbo choked on his champagne. _That_ was unexpected. "I do. Often, I find myself longing for the country life. Something slower-paced."

"Well, you won't get much slower than the Shire," Bilbo remarked. "My father, bless him, said on his deathbed that it was exactly the same from the cradle to grave." But it wasn’t as peaceful and idyllic as he made it sound. Sometimes, Bilbo had felt as if his hometown had a grip on his neck, like a hound on a fox, biting down and slowly squeezing the life out of him. He felt like he was being smothered. He pressed his thumb against the rim of the crystal and watched the tiny bubbles fizz and twist in a pool of shimmering gold. “I-” Bilbo sighed, wondering if he could ever really verbalise that tightness in his chest that came when he thought about going back and just existing, day in, day out, surrounded by books and papers and going home every night to his cold, lonely flat, devoid of life, listening to the ticking off the clock and the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional gurgling of the plumbing as he lay bed, stretching out his hand and feeling the cool press of untouched linen on the other side of the bed.

“I long for a more modern life.” The little hobbit eventually stumbled, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t explain the rush of panic. “Something... meaningful.” That was closer. “I—I envy you, Thorin.” In his periphery, he saw that dark head turn to look him directly in the eye. “You can go to sleep every night knowing that what you’ve done has a purpose.”

"Hm," Thorin looked deep in thought. “I suppose that is what you could almost call it.” But he sounded unsure. “Do you think I have a hand in the changing of this world?”

“Do you not?” Thorin stepped forward, gently placing his empty glass on the tray of a passing waitress and taking another. At least she was kind enough to bend down for him, although Bilbo could tell Thorin was reproachful for it.

“My sphere of influence is more limited than you think.” Thorin murmured against the rim. “The train is on the tracks, Bilbo, and not even Thranduil himself can steer it.”

Bilbo frowned. “Beg pardon? What do you mean?”

“We’re on the edge of a new age.” He spoke as if in a dream, talking to himself rather than Bilbo. “It happens after every war, but this was different. Harad… it changed us. It changed the way we think and fight and create. Mahal, Gondor created a bomb that turns everything from bone to steel and rock into dust. It liquifies the very atoms that make up our bodies. Do you know what’s next? Computers. Robots. Satellites. Rocketships that take us to space. The world is changing faster than it ever has before, and I struggle to wonder if there’s a place for us in it. We dwarves are falling further and further behind, and soon it will be impossible to catch up. We’ll fade away.”

“You won’t lose your people to apathy.” Bilbo smiled at him, but Thorin was thoughtful, his face drawn and shadowed. “Innumerable works in every language of this world both lament and praise dwarves for never, ever giving up.”

“The world is at a crossroads.” Thorin took a deep gulp of his drink. “I’m not sure I can help the dwarves choose the right path.”

“You will.” Bilbo had an absolute faith in him. He held up his glass. “To the stubbornness of dwarves.”

Thorin’s face cracked in a smile, and he lifted his own in a toast. “To the stubbornness of dwarves.” They drank without words, an orb of silence as small and fragile as a robin’s egg in the brightly-lit room.

“Ah, Thorin!” As Bilbo lowered his glass, he saw an elderly man approach him, dressed smartly, his grey-white hair combed back and a pair of thick black glasses perched on a large, squarish nose. Recognising the picture from the inside dustjacket of several treasured novels, Bilbo bit back a squeak, heart leaping in his chest.

“Argus.” They shook hands. “Such a pleasure to see you. How have you been?”

“Oh, run off my feet.” Argus was drinking red wine, swirling the glass and taking a sniff before drinking. “Promotional tours, signings, television appearances — you know. I’m supposed to be on a plane tomorrow morning to Edoras with some film executives. It’s all such a fuss over little old me, and I’m really not used to it.”

“I’m not surprised,” Bilbo blurted out. Argus looked at him, blinking, and instantly, Bilbo’s toes curled in shame. “ _By the Sea_ is very good.” He continued, trying not to stammer. He wanted to go on, talk about the crispness of language, the beautiful parallels in structure with Mockworth’s famed _Ballad of a Seafarer_ , the considered imagery, but when he opened his mouth again, Bilbo found he was struck dumb by what could only be considered as stage fright.

“Forgive me, Argus, I’m very rude.” Thorin came to his rescue. “This is an acquaintance of mine. Bilbo Baggins, this is Argus Milven. Argus, Bilbo.”

“Pleasure.” Bilbo squeaked. “Really — I’ve admired your works ever since I was a student. _A Jar of Ivy_ saved me in my Modern Westron class.”

“Oh? Where did you study?” The old man smiled politely. Bilbo was sure he’d heard it all before, but ploughed on anyway.

“Rivendell. Haryon College.”

“A Haryon boy!” The smile dissolved into something warmer, more genuine. “That was my college too, oh, many years ago now. I had no idea there was a hobbit in our ranks. When did you graduate?” Bilbo found a lump had swollen in his throat and made it hard to speak. He opened his mouth, face already growing red with the impending humiliation of informing one of his literary heroes that he was, in fact, a dropout who never completed his final degree, when Thorin, who had been attempting to gesture towards a waiter with his glass in one hand, spilled his champagne all over Bilbo’s sleeve.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Baggins.” Thorin looked mortified. “You’ll be smelling of the drink all night.”

“N-No matter.” Bilbo shook his drenched sleeve. “It shouldn’t stain.”

“All the same, you best get some water on it. Washrooms are through that door there, and to your left.”

“Yes.” Bilbo drained his glass. “Apologies, Mr Milven. I’ll be right back.” He retreated, rubbing at his damp sleeve and trying his best not to attract any strange looks as he wove his way through the crowd. He turned to look back at Thorin, not really paying attention as to where his feet were taking him, and after a moment, bumped into something very firm and solid. He thought at first it was a pillar, but when Bilbo whipped around, he realised it was actually a _person._

“Oh— Oh my goodness,” he stammered. “I-I am _so_ sorry.” It was an extremely beautiful elf in a leaf-green ballgown of silk and chiffon and white gloves, red hair twisted and piled on top of her head. A string of pearls as big as Bilbo’s teeth encircled her neck. She looked ageless in her pristine elegance, and he knew in an instant that she was the real, full-blooded thing.

“Good evening.” She smiled; red lips, pink gums, white teeth, straight and even and perfect. “I haven’t seen you in these circles before. Are you with someone?”

“Bilbo.” He held out his hand, sleeve soaked with champagne. “Er, Baggins. Bilbo Baggins. I’m here with Thorin Oakenshield.”

“Oh, really?” She took his hand. “Pleasure, Mr Baggins. I’m Tauriel. You looked in a rush, so I won’t keep you. Do have a good evening.” And with that she effortlessly drifted away, swept up in the thickening crowd. It was an utterly unremarkable exchange, and Bilbo completely forgot about as soon as he entered the gilded washroom, the light from the chandelier blinding on the marbled floor. In fact, when he realised that Thorin had intentionally spilled his drink to save Bilbo from the potential embarrassment of recounting his failure, it was hard to think about anything else for a long time.

* * *

The hours flashed by in a haze of crystal and champagne. Bilbo drank what he thought was far too much, but it was offset by the frankly delicious four-course meal served on fine china in portions even Bilbo struggled to finish. He was seated, alongside Thorin, with a Lord Edward Ludham and his wife Violet. Ludham was stiff-boned and appeared bored throughout the proceedings, often chastising the staff for more brandy, but his wife (who by the end of dinner Bilbo affectionately called Lettie, ‘as good friends do, Bilbo dear’) was an avid enthusiast of both botany and provincial architecture. She was simply spellbound as Bilbo spoke about his hometown and made him promise to host her for a week there in the early summer next, when the roses and perennials were in full bloom. Bilbo chuckled and said his humble abode wasn’t made for entertaining, but as the sole trustee of Bag End (the finest house, he insisted, in all of the Shire) he could make her feel quite welcome.

Caen won. Thorin leaned in and muttered in Bilbo’s ear that it wasn’t surprising, considering his uncle owned one of the major sponsors of the prize, but it was drowned out in the applause, and nobody else heard him. The good-looking male elf (although only in part; Bilbo could see the gleam of silver in his sandy hair when he stood under the podium lights) gave a rather-long winded speech about how psychoanalysis had ‘reinvented’ the novel, and Bilbo pretended to be interested, but by the end of the speech, decided that he was a self-important bore who had never had his ideas challenged. The thinly-veiled distaste on Thorin’s face suggested similar assumptions.

“Well, now _that_ is over,” Thorin sighed, draining his glass, “we can go.”

“Oh.” Bilbo deflated. “Home already?” He clung to his glass and with it the memories; even though the speeches were dull and dreary and Lettie made him slightly uncomfortable with her overly enthusiastic demeanour, Bilbo didn’t want this night to end. It was a tantalising glimpse into a world he could have had.

Thorin chuckled. “I wouldn’t have ordered a hotel if we were to retire at nine.” He waved across the room at somebody. “I’m meeting Argus and Edgar at our club, along with some others.”

“Edgar?” A flutter of excitement stirred in Bilbo’s stomach. “Not Edgar Woolswain, by any chance?” Thorin smiled. “Oh, he’s the most talented theatre director _ever_. He actually makes Galdor Séregon interesting.”

“Not a fan of Séregon, Bilbo?” Bilbo shook his head. “Hm. He’s indisputably the greatest playwright Arda has ever witnessed.”

“He’s a hack.” Bilbo said bluntly. “His poetry is all right, but all his plays are poor imitations of much better early-Age texts.” Thorin raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing else. “Oh, I’m aware I’m quite alone in my assumption, Thorin. It’s all right.” He stood to go, and at his side, Lettie, who had been critically examining her crow’s feet in her compact mirror, snapped it shut with a gasp.

“Oh, Bilbo, dear,” Her breath was almost fizzing, “you’re not going already, are you? I’ve had such a lovely time. You’re so _interesting_. How long are you in town for?”

“Er, I’m not sure yet.” The woman stood up and rifled through her beaded clutch.

“Well, you simply _must_ make time and come to tea. The ladies would _love_ to have you. Have you been to the King’s Gardens yet? I can arrange a private tour. Closed to the public.” She winked.

“Th-That sounds lovely.” Bilbo blinked as she thrust a small ivory card in his hand. Her husband simply scowled into his half-drunk brandy, staring at the table with bloodshot eyes.

“Call around anytime.” Lettie smiled. “And I simply cannot _wait_ to see the Shire.”

“It was lovely to see you again, Violet.” Thorin took Bilbo by the elbow. “I’m sure we shall meet again.”

The smile stiffened. “Charmed, Mr Oakenshield.” Bilbo let out a long, slow breath as Thorin led him away, staring down at the card in his hand. _Lady Violet Ludham_ was embossed in a flowery script, along with an address for Ludham Manor in the western countryside and an Olvath villa during the season.

“Well, aren’t you a charmer.” Thorin muttered. “Not your fault — she’s a lush at the best of times, and her husband is sick of her. They go weeks without even seeing each other in that big house of theirs in the country.”

Bilbo thrust the card in his pocket. “She seemed quite pleasant.” He said, a little puzzled at the way Thorin’s mouth twisted, the tight clamp on his elbow.

“Pleasant, yes.” His brow creased in a frown. “Bilbo... she was trying to seduce you.”

“O-Oh!” Bilbo pulled up short in his walk, eyes wide. “ _Really?”_ He gaped. “Me?”

“It couldn’t have been more obvious if she’d thrown herself on the table.” Thorin muttered. “A private tour in the King’s Garden?”

“W-Well,” Bilbo forced a chuckle, sounding strained. “Consider me… impervious to the advances of a woman.” He tried to say it with a macho swagger, as though he didn’t give a fig for the seduction of some ageing woman of society, but his voice cracked and he could feel his face growing red as he realised a second possible interpretation.

The frown deepened, Thorin’s eyes narrowing half a degree as the grip tightened on his elbow. “Impervious.” Why did Thorin do that, always repeating what Bilbo said in that chilly tone, as though he was testing a lie? Bilbo held his excruciating gaze and gave a shrug, trying and failing to look breezy. It was a strange moment; Thorin was impossible to read and it was unsettling. Bilbo felt his insides withering and the champagne and nerves were making his head spin.

“Come on.” Thorin finally let him go and turned away, looking more thoughtful than suspicious now. “Let’s catch a cab before some other dreary woman tries to talk to us.”

* * *

‘The club’ (Pickering Gentlemen’s Club, to be exact) was a beautiful stone building just around the corner from the Grand Civic and identified only by an unassuming brass plaque. Bilbo followed Thorin in, who told him that as a guest of the club, he should stay close to Thorin and let him order all the drinks. Bilbo was happy to oblige. It was exactly as Bilbo had read in novels and seen in movies; a forest of oak panels and rich wine-red leather, roaring fireplaces and expensive oil paintings on the walls. It was full of men and elves and a couple of orcs — no other dwarves, and certainly no hobbits.

Eight of them ended up in a ring of deep armchairs and couches, some puffing on cigars. Bilbo drank the whisky that Thorin recommended and listened as three MPs, a writer, a director and two barons debated everything under the sun from the latest economic report to the upcoming winter season at the Olvath Operatic Society. The others were mostly welcoming of this odd little stranger, and Bilbo’s confidence slowly grew as the night wore on. After an hour or so, he found those immediately next to him growing quiet when he spoke, and the hush of respect emboldened him. Bilbo wound up debating Caen’s victory at length with Argus — who was more of a Modernist than Bilbo had expected, given his writing — and Thorin had to step in before things got out of hand.

At one, they decided to call it a night. Bilbo shook hands with everyone and apologised to Argus for his hotheadedness (Argus waved his hand and said not to worry; he thoroughly enjoyed a good debate with a stout mind. Bilbo had to fight to contain his beam of pride) and followed Thorin out into the street. It was a balmy night, quite unlike the chilly evenings of Erebor, and Bilbo was flushed with liquor and more than a little tipsy.

“Oh, no.” Bilbo grabbed Thorin’s wrist when he attempted to flag down a cab. “Please, Thorin, it’s a lovely night and I _never_ see the city. Can we walk?”

Thorin stared down at his wrist, and smiled. “Of course.”

The wide avenue was dotted with partygoers — young ladies in dresses and torn nylons, tottering on their heels, dragged, laughing, by flushed boys in rumpled suits and loosened ties. Music spilled onto the streets — bright, jaunty horns and pianos, and some danced as they walked, shrieking. Bilbo kept close to Thorin’s side, occasionally looking over at him with a smile. Thorin pointed out particularly famous buildings as they walked, his own hair coming out of his braid and a brightness in his eyes.

They turned left onto a cobbled avenue lit only by the sultry means of upstairs windows. The mournful keening of a lone saxophone issued from the ground beneath him, and Bilbo noticed the neon sign over a pair of stairs leading beneath an apartment building and into a basement. “Oh, Thorin!” He beamed. “A proper underground jazz bar. I’ve never been. Please, one drink? Just one.”

Thorin tried to look put out, but Bilbo could see he was fighting back a smile. “Just one.” He winked, rested his hand on Bilbo’s elbow, and Bilbo could feel his heart picking up steam in his chest, thudding against his ribs as they made contact.

It was a sensual room, hazy with cigarette smoke and lit only by candles burning low on the half-filled tables. Onstage, a solo orc played a bluesy tune, dressed in his shirtsleeves with his suspenders undone, hanging down his legs. Bilbo and Thorin sat near the back, legs swinging in the open space beneath the too-big chairs, and were brought two Gimlets without ordering. It was sharp and citrusy after the smokiness of the whisky, and Bilbo sputtered on the first sip.

“What a lovely night.” He leaned back in the spindly chair, the edge of the table at his chest. “Thank you, Thorin, for bringing me out. Really.”

“I’ll be honest.” Thorin traced vague circles in the table. “I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, Bilbo. There’s much more to you than meets the eye.”

“We got off on the wrong foot.” Bilbo wished the seat was higher. At least they were both short and stunted in their too-big chairs. “I’m glad you gave me a second chance.”

“Well, yes.” Thorin sipped at his drink. “I didn’t expect our first meeting would begin with you snooping about in my things.” He looked at Bilbo with a frown now. “It’s been bothering me, and I have to ask — what is it you were looking at?”

“Pardon?” Bilbo felt his stomach tighten, and it had nothing to do with the liquor. “Wh-Whatever do you mean?”

“My photograph. You were staring at it like — well, like it was the page of a novel or a list of sums. You were studying it.”

“O-Oh.” Bilbo hid himself in his drink. “Historical curiosity. I-I’ve read quite a lot on the Forodwaith Wars, you know, and, er, it’s always fascinating to come across a first-hand source.”

“Hm.” Thorin stared at the burning candle. The dulcet tones of the saxophone filled the silence, and Bilbo found himself growing more and more uncomfortable. He stared at the prints and posters and photographs on the walls, trying to think of something to say. Thorin got there first, staring at Bilbo with his jaw locked so tight it almost shook, hands clutched into white-knuckled fists. “Bilbo,” he spoke very, very quietly, “are you a homosexual?”

The bottom dropped out of Bilbo’s stomach. A sick, twisting horror enveloped his insides, and he could only manage a croak when he tried to speak. Bilbo swallowed hard, clearing his throat and wiping at his forehead with a shaking hand. “O-Of course not.” He finally stammered, trying and failing to look at him. “I-I know I’m a b-bachelor, but I’m certainly not—”

“You said you were 'impervious to women’.” Thorin quoted him, his face growing increasingly serious. But beyond that seriousness, despite the brightness of his eyes, there was something else, an intensity, a hope — or fear — at the answer. “The way you speak — about emotion and psyche, the way you take care of your appearance, the way you looked at that photograph of me — Mahal, the way you act without a trace of masculinity…” Thorin drew in a sharp breath. “Is that all simply coincidence?”

It was impossible to breathe in this smoke. Bilbo downed his drink, stomach lurching, and pulled at his bowtie and collar, popping buttons. He mopped at his face again with his sleeve, which still smelled of champagne, aware his mouth was shaking. “I-I am not a d-deviant or a pervert.” He clung to the empty cocktail glass. “A-And I would appreciate you _not_ making such accusations, Thorin.”

“I’m not going to report you for gross indecency, Bilbo, for goodness sake.” Thorin hardened. “I-I…” He looked at the walls, biting on his lip. And then he leaned in, resting his hand on Bilbo’s wrist so he let go of the glass. “I am wondering,” he whispered, “if I have an ally.”

It took a moment for poor Bilbo to realise what Thorin meant. Alcohol had dulled him and the questioning about his sexuality had dashed his nerves to pieces. When it fell into place, a painful surge rattled his gut, sticking in his throat, and he felt at once like laughing and crying at the sick irony of what it meant. “A-Are you…” Thorin retreated, finding solace in his glass. “No. No.”

“Yes.” Thorin mumbled against the rim. As soon as he had finished his drink, the glasses were whisked away and replaced with another. Bilbo couldn’t fault the service. They both stared at their cocktails, comprehending things slowly. The tune had ended, and after soft clapping, the orc started up again with a crooning songstress in a sequined red gown.

“H-How…” Bilbo cleared his throat again. “How long have you known?”

“Since university.” Thorin replied. “I, er, had attempted several affairs with my female classmates and acquaintances, but it was always… disappointing. It wasn’t until I overhead two other undergraduates talking in a pub that the possibility I could be… like that, ever crossed my mind.” He looked up. “You? Or are you still going to deny it?”

Bilbo’s stomach melted. “I-I… I always knew.” Slowly the realisation that Thorin was like him — troubled, temperamental, flitty, whatever euphemism you wanted to use — displaced the horror of being outed, and Bilbo’s drunken heart at the possibility, the implication of the two of them both feeling like they did… Oh. He was starting to feel unwell with his giddiness. “I had… encounters in grammar school and university.” The memory was a damper on his elation, and he found his tentative smile drooping. “But nothing since. Some people in the Shire — they may suspect that I’m a little, well, lavender, but I’ve not acted on it.”

“You’re more brave than I.” Thorin’s shoulders were slumped, an alien, wistful expression on his face.

“Haven’t you ever…” Thorin took his head and took a drink. “Ever?”

“No, Bilbo.” He said crisply. “Never. I don’t need to tell you that dwarves are exceedingly conservative. And once I began my political career, I became aware that such a scandal would ruin me in an instant.”

“But what about the Forodwaith Wars?” Thorin scoffed and shook his head. “All those men, no women or dams anywhere…”

“I don’t know what novels you read, but it wasn’t like that for my battalion. We were more concerned with keeping ourselves alive than fulfilling sexual desire.” But there was a tendon standing out on Thorin’s neck against the crisp white of his collar. Bilbo stared at it while he spoke, one hand stretched out across the table as though he longed to touch it.

They didn’t mention it again at the bar, but striking that common bond seemed to break down a very real barrier between them. They ended up staying until the bar closed around three, talking about their school days in Rivendell and comparing lecturers, about cricket teams and who was the best batsman in the Gondor team, laughing at some of the sillier fashions on the young boys dancing by the stage, telling anecdotes about peculiar people and events in the past — just shooting the breeze, nothing serious. The longer they spoke, the more Bilbo realised that while they did have plenty in common, there was enough difference between them to keep things interesting and encourage light-hearted debate.

They walked arm in arm like schoolyard chums, a little unsteady on their feet, going the wrong way for a few hundred yards and having to double back, laughing. By the time they finally made it to the hotel, where they were let in through the night entrance by an unimpressed but begrudgingly respectful doorman, Bilbo concluded that it really was the nicest night he could remember having.

“I can’t go back to the Shire after this.” He sighed breathlessly, leaning against the wall by his door. “Oh, Thorin, I want to drink and go to dinners and debate and discuss culture at the club forever.” Thorin stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, hovering over him. Bilbo pressed his hands against the wallpaper.

Thorin said nothing as he rested one hand on the wall by Bilbo’s head. He was drunk, but there was a clarity in his eyes, a sharpness that cut deeper than the liquor — the resolve of a soul who had lost their inhibitions but still had their sense. Bilbo’s mouth was very dry. He squeaked, heart jumping as Thorin’s other hand came up to his shoulder and closed around the bone. He leaned in — close, he was very close now, close enough for Bilbo to smell him. Close enough for the loose tendrils of hair from his half-woven braid to gently brush against his chest as he lowered his head.

And he leaned in, closer, closer, lips half-parted, breathing as though he was in physical pain. Frozen, Bilbo clung to the wall, the rushing in his ears drowning out the sound of his own strangled gasps of air, heart thudding so hard it almost broke. His whole body throbbed in time with his erratic pulse, growing heavier and heavier as Thorin grew so close their noses almost touched. Bilbo closed his eyes, a lover receiving a kiss, and waited, the yearning and disbelief and overwhelming joy that it was _really happening_ pulling inside his abdomen, twisting his insides into painful knots.

But Thorin bypassed his mouth, and Bilbo felt the scrape of his beard along his own hairless cheek. Their bodies touched in this closeness, chest to chest, hip to hip, and he could feel every muscle of Thorin’s twitching and throbbing, trembling with an immutable desire. Thorin’s breath in his ear was tortured, and the hand on his shoulder drifted up, touching his neck. The touch was an electric shock, jolting Bilbo’s bones, and he bit back a groan, begging, pleading for Thorin with every inch of his body to keep touching him, deeper and further, to never, ever stop.

Abruptly, Thorin pulled away. Bilbo’s eyes flew open. He was gasping for air and his face was red and sweaty, as though he’d ran for miles and miles. Shaking madly, he pulled his hands away and squeezed them into fists at his side, clenching his teeth. They had never even kissed, but it was the most passionate, erotic moment of Bilbo’s life. He could barely stand, knees weak as he continued to lean heavily against the wall.

“Thorin," he croaked, unable to even stretch one arm out. The moment was so uneasy, so tentative, and he was terrified even a single word would break it. Thorin took a step back, looking horrified at himself, at what he'd done. "Thorin." But he retreated, backing away without another word until his hand closed on the porcelain painted doorknob to his own room. "No, please—"

Thorin wrenched open the door and threw himself inside, looking possessed. Bilbo gasped and sprang forward, staggering. He heard the click of the lock as he gripped the door. Defeated, Bilbo leaned his forehead against the panelling. "Thorin," he pleaded, knowing he was on the other side, "please open the door."

But it remained locked.

 


	10. Chapter 10

The breakfast parlour was beautiful. Bilbo stood on ceremony, taking in the clamshell ceiling mouldings, the blue-flowered wallpaper that gleamed with hand-painted brushstrokes of gold, antique chairs with velvet and brocade cushions and white damask linen draped on tiny round tables. It was half-full of mostly businessmen and several women in flowered crepe dresses, as though a memo had gone out for matching attire. He was reminded of the expensive seaside resorts one would see in films and magazine pictures, but instead of blue skies and golden sands outside the bay window, there was the granite facade of an historic bank (now an art gallery and theatre) opposite, dim and faded in a gloomy morning light. Fitting. It matched his mood.

A waiter led him over to a windowside table for two and pressed a menu into his hand. Bilbo asked for tea; Anduin Gold, judging from the aroma. Expensive and delicate and quite spoiled when heaped with milk and sugar. “Does sir require the Telegraph, the Report, the Post or the Independent this morning?”

“Oh, Telegraph, please.” Bilbo mumbled. “Thank you.” The waiter left him then to peruse the menu. What he really wanted was sausages and bacon and baked beans — something heavy to squash down the queasiness in his stomach. Unable to choose between the smoked salmon and poached eggs and the pastry basket, Bilbo asked for both. He glanced at the Telegraph headline — a mangled trainwreck on the western eaves of the Greenwood — and left it folded on the table, resting his chin on his hand and staring out the window.

Despite the gorgeous surroundings, sumptuous food and excellent tea, Bilbo was having what had to be the worst morning of his life since a fire at Bag End had gutted the three guest rooms and the nicest parlour ten years ago. His eyes snapped open at precisely seven thirty-two, greeted with a hangover the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since Rivendell and a deep shame in his stomach as the images and colours and sounds of last night rushed and clamoured in his throbbing head. He used the tiled shower (the first he’d ever experienced, and after almost half an hour of sputtering and rinsing shampoo from his eyes, Bilbo resolved it would be his last), dressed as quickly as his fumbling brain let him, and spent fifteen minutes pacing back and forth in front of Thorin’s room, pressing his ear against it twice and hearing nothing.

He’d well and truly funked it. Bilbo sighed into his tea, wanting to crawl under the table. Was he not giving the right signals? He combed through it, time and time again, reliving the heavy weight of Thorin’s body against his, the breath in his ear, the soft purr of his breath. Where did it go wrong? What did Bilbo do to ruin it so suddenly?

Both breakfasts came after twenty minutes, and Bilbo had to rest the pastries on his folded paper. He ate slowly, trying to savour every mouthful, but the eggs felt rubbery and bland and flakes of pastry were stuck in his throat. Halfway through, he set down his knife and fork and resolved to give up and go back upstairs, but as he scooted back in his chair, Bilbo caught sight of an achingly familiar figure in the curved archway. The linen napkin knotted in his fingers, and Bilbo held his breath as Thorin crossed the room, face remaining still as he caught Bilbo’s eye. Without a word, he pulled back the chair and slid in with a whisper-softness, looking haggard and detached.

“Thorin,” Bilbo croaked, fingers going purple and the eggs and pastry and berry coulis and salmon going heavy and sour in his stomach, “Thorin, I—”

“Good morning, sir.” The waiter seemed to come from nowhere. Thorin’s eyes slid up to him. “Would you care for tea or coffee while you peruse the menu?”

“Coffee.” Thorin’s voice was brittle. “No menu for me, please. I shan’t take breakfast.”

“Very good, sir.” He reappeared after a moment with a porcelain kettle, poured a thick, strong coffee that made Bilbo’s eyes water across the table, and left. Thorin stared down at it, exhaling deeply, before lifting the delicate cup and raising it to his cracked lips.

“Thorin—” Bilbo started, but the dwarf got their first.

“Please, allow me to speak.” He spoke with a stiff formality that made Bilbo’s stomach contract, setting down his cup with a definitive clink. “I must apologise for last night. I had too much to drink, and it was, as you can imagine, completely out of character for me.”

“It’s all right.” His heart was starting to race as Thorin slipped further and further away. “Honestly, I-I should have—”

“I think it best for both of us if we were to operate under the assumption that last night never happened.” Thorin looked him dead in the eye. There was a flatness in his gaze, and his speech was dull and rehearsed, with none of his usual wry nonchalance. Bilbo bit back a whimper. “I would like our relationship to remain strictly professional from this moment on, Mr Baggins.”

“No.” Bilbo whispered, feeling his heart crack in his throbbing chest. Thorin’s breath caught in his chest, but he otherwise ignored him, draining of his coffee.

“If you would excuse me, I have some business to attend to in my parliamentary office.” Even though he hadn’t eaten, Thorin dabbed at his mouth with the still-folded napkin. “Unfortunately, I cannot accompany you this morning, but you should still have a pleasant time. Pack your bag and leave it on the bed, and it will be taken care of by the staff. There are visitor’s maps in the hotel lobby, and the clerks are very agreeable. I’m sure a hobbit of your refined tastes can entertain themselves for several hours.” He reached inside his blazer and pulled out his Nimras, writing neatly on the edge of the Telegraph. “I’ll meet you at this address at precisely two o’clock. Please don’t be late; we have a strict schedule.”

“Don’t do this.” Bilbo’s bare toes curled and he thought quite seriously that he was going to be sick. Thorin seemed not to have heard him. He stood up, sliding the pen back into his inner breast pocket.

“I would recommend attending the Olvath Opera House, if you have time. They have a fabulous display of costumes from past productions, and the guide is very knowledgeable.” Bilbo squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Good day, Mr Baggins.”

When he opened his eyes again, Thorin was gone. Bilbo leaned back in his chair and felt the breath quake in his lungs, throat burning with a familiar rising sting as he tried very, very hard not to burst into frustrated tears. Blinking rapidly, he stared at the moulding, out the window, listening to the hushed murmur of conversation around him, disconnected, disinterested, disengaged.

When it became apparent he couldn’t tilt his head back and let it filter back through, Bilbo dashed into the restroom. Thankfully, it was unattended; he splashed cold water over his face until the rest of his face looked just as flushed and red as his eyes and pressed his mouth against a soft white towel as a pained moan rattled in his throat.

Bilbo ignored the maps in the lobby and the cheery wishes to have a good day. On the pavement, he stood rather awkwardly with his hands in his pockets, looking up the street and then down it but not knowing which direction to walk in. Above him, the clouds threatened rain. His fingers touched upon a slip of paper in his left pocket, and Bilbo fished it out. Thorin’s address. Bilbo read it over and over until his vision blurred.

Homesickness leaped in his throat. All of a sudden, he wanted nothing more than to leave. He wanted his fireside chair and his bookshop and Marigold and his untidy flat. Cheated out of happiness, all the optimism of this strange expedition had been sucked clean out of him. He felt flimsy and hollow; a piece of litter that had been dropped carelessly and floundered in the leaves and muck of the gutter. What was the point? Bilbo slipped the paper back in his pocket and walked slowly, shoulders hunched against the promise of rain. The agony of Thorin’s rejection had dulled him, left him listless. He began to wish he’d never come at all.

As he walked, a light patter of rain fell. Bilbo breathed in, smelled gasoline and misty water. He thought briefly about attending the Opera House as Thorin advised, but realised he had no idea where that was, and had no interest in questioning strangers. Morose, Bilbo indulged in his depression as he wandered, occasionally looking up to briefly admire the architecture and making sure a street was clear before he crossed it. His hat grew damp and dripped water down his and neck, and soon Bilbo started to shiver. Eventually, he gave up and ducked into the nearest cafe, ordering tea and a cheese scone and sitting at the window.

It was a busy morning with people ducking in from the rain, and the table was yet to be cleared. Bilbo stacked three side-plates and a tea-tray for two at the edge of the table and gathered up the slim stack of magazines and pamphlets that had been left behind. They contained information for several universities. With nothing better to do, Bilbo leafed through them while he waited for his piping tea to cool. He sniffed at the literature courses (not a patch on Rivendell, of course) and winced at the fees, glad yet again that he got in on a good scholarship rather than mortgaging Bag End up to the back garden to pay for something he never even finished.

As he ate the crumbly scone — a day old, at least, with not quite enough butter — Bilbo found himself perusing the prospectus for Olvath Technological Institute, which on the cover considered itself the foremost engineering academy north of Mordor. Some of the courses — electrical engineering, meteorology, nuclear physics — sounded like they belonged in science fiction. Bilbo read the informative briefs provided by the heads of various departments and sipped at his tea. When he read the page on the aeronautical engineering programme, however, he stopped, and with a little frown read it again.

Candidates must express proficiency in writing and reading comprehension, maths, and sciences, particularly physics. Owing to the highly technical nature of the course, familiarity with mechanical engineering is strongly encouraged. Upon completion, students will have the opportunity to apply for exclusive graduate programmes with either the Royal Air Force or Caranthir Airlines…

“Excuse me, miss,” his subpar scone abandoned, Bilbo approached the counter, prospectus in hand, “but can you please tell me how I can get to the Olvath Technical Institute?”

The girl smiled and drew a crude street map on the back page with several bus codes. Seized with resolve and determined to put Thorin out of his head for a little while, Bilbo set off down the street, the booklet concealed under his blazer to protect it from the rain.

* * *

After a quick lunch of asparagus rolls and egg sandwiches, Bilbo was back on the streets, a collection of books and study guides wrapped in wax paper tucked firmly under one arm. The sun had finally broken through the heavy clouds and warmed the rain-slick ground beneath his bare feet. The atmosphere was considerably more cheerful than it was earlier in the morning, and Bilbo even caught himself humming along as he passed a record store with speakers turned out into the street. After tracking down the dean of admissions and pretending to be a kindly uncle wanting to put his nephew on the straight and narrow and giving off just the right sort of wealthy airs, Bilbo left with several forms, a booklist, and everything he needed to know. Being in a university again (even a science-based one) instilled within Bilbo a melancholic nostalgia as he made his way through the courtyards to the university bookshops. Even the smell of academica — of old books, furniture oils, ink and fresh-boiled tea — seemed to linger in his nose long after he caught the bus back into the city centre, hugging his little parcel of hope close to his chest.

The streets were in a sleepy, post-lunch quiet, and as Bilbo turned a corner, he was alone, save for half-a-dozen pigeons pecking at an abandoned bread roll in the gutter and a woman on an upstairs balcony reading a book and smoking. Bilbo smiled, let his shoulders roll loose and arms swing a little as he dared to feel better about how this day was proceeding.

Behind him was the deep purr of an automobile. Bilbo looked over his shoulder at the sound and stopped to look, taken aback. It was a gorgeous pearl-white stretch limousine (how it fitted around the corner, he didn’t know), with winged wheel arches and gleaming chrome accents. The hood ornament was a stag, rearing back on its hind legs, and the windows were completely blacked out. Bilbo whistled and stepped back on instinct to allow the vehicle space as it rumbled down the street. Surprise grew as the vehicle slowed to a stop just in front of Bilbo, and the back door clicked open.

“Sorry, are you lost?” Nobody came out immediately, and Bilbo took a curious step forward. All he could see was a tall, pale elf dressed completely in black with clean-cut brown hair and dark sunglasses, sitting upright in his seat with one hand on the door. “I’m new here, I’m afraid, can’t offer any direct—” Bilbo was cut off with a gasp as he was seized and hauled inside the car. His hat fell off and the wrapped books tumbled from his hands and fell beside him as he was pinned to the floor, arms firmly behind his back. The door closed and beneath him, the ground lurched as the limousine roared into live.

“What the blazes is going on?” Bilbo squeaked, muffled against the rug. All he could see was an expensive-looking square-toed loafer in pure, unblemished white and several inches of silk trousers in a stunning, shimmery silver. “Wh-Who are you?”

“Galion, please.” A silky, immediately familiar voice droned. Bilbo froze. It was one he had heard on the wireless, at the pictures, and on television when a guest at other’s houses. “No need to manhandle the thing. I'm sure he’s quite harmless.”

“Yes, your Majesty.” The strong hands on his arms let go. Bilbo slowly got onto his hands and knees and lifted his gaze. The limousine was spotlessly clean, with a polished wood floor (some sort of tile or linoleum, it had to be) and two massive seats in crimson leather. Against one side was a tiny bar, with half-pints of clear liquor in square crystal decanters and a jar of green olives chained to the wall. On the other side was a sleek black telephone, the ultra-modern, push-button kind. The long-limbed elf sat on the seat opposite, one leg crossed over the other. Over the spotless silk trousers, he wore the thick fur of some exotic animal, snow-white and striped with black, the collar tucked high beneath his chin. His hair fell down in a blonde sheet to the small of his back, head wound with a wire-thin circlet of silver or some other white metal, unadorned. One hand clutched a silver-topped cane set with a massive diamond, fingers dripping with white gems and opals, the other a half-filled martini, tiny gold flakes turning lazily in the glass.

“Good afternoon, Mr Baggins.” King Thranduil’s lip twitched in a half-smile, but his stare was cold and clinical. “Take a seat, please.”

Well, they certainly didn’t have the wrong person then. Too afraid to speak, Bilbo collected his now-crumpled paper parcel, and, shaking from his now-bare head to his wet feet, pulled himself up onto the leather seat beside the dark-haired elf in the impenetrable sunglasses, who immediately rested a threatening hand on his shoulder, holding him in place. Finally, he noticed the fourth person in the backseat of the limousine, sitting beside Thranduil with an open notebook in her lap and a pen in her hand — a female with her red hair pulled into a bun at the base of her neck and a prim black ladies’ suit. It took several moments for Bilbo to recognise her.

“I know you.” He stammered stupidly. “From the dinner— Tauriel.” Thranduil’s heavy eyebrow arched and he didn’t shift his gaze, taking a delicate sip of his drink without showing his teeth.

“How observant, Mr Baggins.” She scribbled something without looking down. Bilbo looked at all of them in turn, clutching the books so tight the corners poked into his chest as he tried to figure out what was going on. Did they think Bilbo was some sort of spy? Did they know about their encounter at the hotel? Oh, heck, what if they had suspicions about Erebor?

“Wh-Why am I here?” Bilbo asked, looking at Thranduil now.

“Yes, Mr Baggins.” Thranduil uncrossed his legs and tightened his grip on his jet-black cane. “Why are you here? Olvath is a very long way for a little hobbit to be travelling on his own.”

“W-Well,” Bilbo cleared his throat, “I c-came on business, you see. I run a bookshop, and—”

“Yes, the Scribbled Quire.” His voice was as smooth as silk and rich as honey, getting into Bilbo’s bones. It had a quality that had always been lost in the haze of radio static. There was an intensity in his eyes that no flickering cinema image or royal portrait had ever been able to faithfully reproduce. Bilbo had always thought the ancient elven king as a sort of eccentric, in his ostentatious clothes that had to be centuries old, but sitting now, in such close quarters, he could feel Thranduil’s spell working on him already, and he was starting to sweat. “I wouldn’t think a city visit entirely necessary for a provincial bookshop.”

“W-Well, I thought I was in need of a holiday.” Bilbo’s stomach was curdling, and it was hard to keep pace with his frantic babbling. “I’ve heard such lovely things about your beautiful capital, Your Majesty—”

“And how is it that you know Thorin Oakenshield?” Thranduil cut through the pleasantries, narrowing his brilliantly blue eyes.

Bilbo swallowed. “A-An old acquaintance of my father’s.” He croaked. The elf’s hand was unbearably heavy on his shoulder. “He very kindly offered to host me while I was in town.”

“Except Oakenshield hasn’t been in town.” Thranduil’s smile widened just a touch. “He’s been absent from his offices for at least a week, and his secretary is behaving most intolerably.”

“Well,” Bilbo was starting to feel dizzy. Outside, the city passed them, gloomy and dim through the heavy tint. “I’m unaware his day-to-day affairs, but—”

“Might I remind you, Mr Baggins, that the Shire is a protectorate of my kingdom, and as your official head of state, any misinformation you spread is at best considered fraud and at worst tantamount to treason.” Thranduil ran his thumb over the jewel in his cane, as though feeling for impurities. He paused for effect, obviously enjoying the way Bilbo nervously squirmed in his seat, and continued. “I conducted a little research on you.” Silently, Tauriel handed over her notebook, and Thranduil aloud from it read it one-handed, the cane perched against his thigh. “Landowner parents, living mostly off inherited wealth. Exceptionally bright student, enrolled in literature at Rivendell University twenty-seven years ago, quickly specialising in Ancient languages, particularly Khuzdul. First-class honours, dean’s list… You were a very promising scholar of dwarvish languages, and your views as a graduate student were… controversial.”

“Th-That was a long time ago.” He realised the angle Thranduil was trying to dig at, grasping desperately for an alibi. “I-I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve thoroughly retired from academia.”

“You didn’t retire.” The smile turned into a sneer. “You were expelled.”

Another rush of fear. “Er, I think you’ll find it was a mutual decision reached by all parties—”

“Don’t be coy, Mr Baggins. I was informed of your sordid little affair.” The colour drained from Bilbo’s face, and his heart started beating very hard in his chest. Thranduil snapped the notebook shut. “Oakenshield has been a thorn in my side for decades with his tirades on civil rights and equality for his people, and he’s got it in his head that there’s a conspiracy against him.” The sneer deepened, making his beautiful face ugly. “Why else would you be here? There is nothing else remarkable about you, Mr Baggins.” The limousine started turning a wide corner, and Bilbo’s stomach lurched at the motion.

“I-I beg your pardon?” He squeaked, trying to sound surprised but knowing how painfully guilty he looked with his nervous stammering. “I’m not sure I follow—”

“Your act is getting tiresome.” He passed the notebook back to Tauriel and took another drink. “Please, stop trying to trifle with me. Do I have to remind you,” Thranduil lowered his voice, “that in this moment, nobody in the entire world knows exactly where you are?”

He grew cold. “Please.” Bilbo knew that playing innocent was the only defence he had. The idea of releasing any information about Erebor was unthinkable — he couldn’t do that to Thorin, not when they were so close to uncovering the truth. Determined to hold on to his supposed ignorance to the end, Bilbo tried to steel himself. “I-I’m just in Olvath on a bit of a holiday, and Thorin Oakenshield is an acquaintance of my father’s—”

“Do you think you can fool me?” Thranduil’s voice was as hard as iron. “This is the last time I shall ask politely. Oakenshield could have at least given you a better cover story. What other reason could he possibly have for engaging in any sort of relationship with a small business owner from the Shire?” He was right. Bilbo’s fingers and toes were tingling from the increased bloodflow, and his head was positively spinning. Stupid— Stupid. Why did he have to open his big mouth last night? Why did he have to tell some complete stranger exactly who he was and the company he kept? Thranduil expected some great secret, and with the pieces he had, it pointed so clearly to one obvious conclusion that there was no way Bilbo could stammer his way out of it. He couldn’t stop himself from wondering what Thranduil’s impolite questioning would entail, and with a shiver, resolved he would do his best not to find out.

“Please, Your Majesty.” Bilbo tightened his grip on the books. “I-I have no idea what you think we’re getting up to. I wanted to have a week away from the shop. It was cousin Otho who suggested I write to Mr Oakenshield, and after last night, I’m jolly glad I did. What a lovely night! And wasn’t the dinner marvellous?” He forced a self-conscious smile. “Although, truth be told, Mr Oakenshield is a very… brusque, isn’t he? I think I bore him. Conspiracy theories and cover stories! Your Majesty, I’m far less interesting than you make me out to be.”

Thranduil frowned. He kept his gaze fixed on Bilbo, waiting for him to crack, but Bilbo held firm, trying to act as blissfully ignorant of any wider danger as he could. With a brief exhale, Thranduil leaned across to whisper something in Tauriel’s ear. Her eyes flickered sideways for a moment and then back to Bilbo, narrowed in concentration. Her lips sealed shut, the elf slowly shook her head.

“Hm.” Thranduil drained the gold martini, and Tauriel took the empty glass without instruction. “Forgive me, Mr Baggins. It appears I was mistaken.”

“Oh, not a trifle.” Bilbo gabbled. “Can’t be too careful nowadays. Why, I remember my old Uncle Isembard took in a travelling student for a night some winters back. Lovely young lad, he said, bright as a button and gentle as a rabbit. Woke up in the morning, and all his good silverware had been nicked right out of the drawer.” He shook his head. “Don’t trust any folk you don’t know, he said, and I do my best to live by that too. It’s the quiet life for me, Your Majesty. Lovely as this city is, I am anxious to get back to the Shire.”

Thranduil forced mild interest. “Don’t let me keep you, Mr Baggins.” He lifted his cane and tapped at the partition behind him. Smoothly, the car rolled to a stop. “But I would offer some advice.” Thranduil lolled back in his seat, obviously done with him. Galion opened the limousine door. “Do enjoy yourself, but be cautious. Oakenshield brings trouble upon anybody soul unfortunate to associate with him. You wouldn’t want to get into trouble on his account, hm?” He chuckled. “Another drink, Tauriel…”

“All right, out you go.” The dark-haired elf pulled Bilbo by the elbow out of the car and pushed him unceremoniously onto the street. Bilbo scrabbled for his books, blinking. Although cloudy, the day was unbearably bright after the dimness of the limousine, and it seared his eyes.

“Wait—” Head spinning, Bilbo righted himself and tried to stagger behind, but they had already turned back into the street, garish and gleaming against the blacks and greys and dark greens of the automobiles around it. He panted. What just happened?

Through the fuddle, Bilbo looked down at his watch and started. It was almost two, and he had no idea how far away he was from his destination. Dazzled by Thranduil, he waved his hand around until a taxicab slowed, pulling into the curb and splashing muddy rainwater all over Bilbo’s feet. He didn’t notice in the slightest.

“Well, ‘ello, guv.” The orc beamed cheerfully as Bilbo staggered into the backseat. “Where are you off to, then?”

“Oh, er…” Bilbo fumbled in his pocket. “One-twenty-four, west Park Lane, please.”

“Orright, won’t be a jif.” The cab lurched. Bilbo set the wrapped books on the seat beside him and leaned forward, raking his fingers through his hair. “Cor, you look well pale. Feeling a bit Pat and Mick?”

Bilbo lifted his head with a short gasp. “King Thranduil just gave me a ride in his private limousine.”

The orc sniggered. “Yeah, and I 'ave three horses in the Edoras Derby.”

“I need a lie down.” Bilbo groaned, throwing himself against the backseat and pressing his hands against his face. “Or a hard drink.”

“Ain’t there a pub on west Park? Yeah, there is.” The orc rubbed at his nose. “Pint and chips, that’ll set y’right up.”

Bilbo could only manage a weak mumble, too morose to even lift his head and peer out the window. He curled up in the oversized back seat and listened to the orc natter on about football and horse racing, interspersed with shouting slang out the window when he disagreed with a fellow passing motorist.

So, Thranduil suspected Thorin was up to something. Was Thorin aware that he’d piqued His Majesty’s interest? Could he cover his tracks against some sort of spy, if it came to it? Had Bilbo really been able convince Thranduil that he was a nobody, an uncertain houseguest on a brief holiday and already pining for the country?

It was all his fault. He’d gone and exposed himself to a personal confidant of King Thranduil himself. Bilbo nearly endangered everyone with his thoughtlessness, mere hours after his relationship with Thorin suffered a nearly irreparable blow. Guilt burned, and by the time his taxicab pulled up outside the address, Bilbo’s head was throbbing. He fumbled in his pocket and pushed far too much money into the orc’s hands, snatched up his package (Oh, that stupid idea seemed so insignificant now that Bilbo was loathe to carry it) and stumbled out into the street. It was a rather dingy little tea-room that Thorin had chosen, with faded posters stuck in the window and the hanging sign over the door in need of a good clean. Bilbo straightened the collar of his blazer and brushed at the still-damp wool, squaring his shoulder. He could do this. He could face Thorin light of what had just happened.

Oh dear.

Thorin pushed the door open and frowned at him in the street. “You’re late.” He said brusquely, carrying a suitcase in one hand. “Our driver has been waiting around the back for nearly fifteen minutes.” A heavy eyebrow arched at the wrapped books in his hands. “Out shopping?”

“I-I—” Bilbo sputtered, and his nerve failed him. What would Thorin say, if he knew about Thranduil? Would he exclude Bilbo from the rest of the expedition, for his own safety and the safety of the others? Would he throw Bilbo out completely for what had done? “I’m sorry.” Bilbo choked out. Thorin paused as he only now realised how shaken the poor hobbit had become. “I— I was on time, b-but then out of nowhere, I…” He gasped, pressing his palm against the left side of his face. “Oh, Thorin, it was awful.”

“What in Mahal’s name happened to you?” Thorin lowered his voice and approached him. “You’re white as a sheet. Did somebody accost you?”

“You could say that.” He breathed. “I-It was Thranduil.” At the sound of his name, Thorin’s face went tense and dark, his lips pursing in a knot. “I— I just—”

“Not here.” Thorin grabbed his elbow. Bilbo was too panicky to feel his normal rush of euphoria at the touch. Thorin led him around the corner and down a narrow side-street where a handsome Rohirrim saloon was waiting. “Don’t say anything. Wait until we get to my house, and remain calm.”

“O-OK.” Bilbo climbed in beside him, trying to breathe slowly. He traced lopsided circles on the paper while they drove, occasionally staring out the window and taking in only a blur beneath a swampy grey sky. Thorin didn’t speak a word, pretending to read papers from his suitcase; Bilbo watched distinctly as his startling blue eyes remained at a fixed point on the page, and he didn’t blink.

Finally, they made it. Thorin slid out of the backseat with a short thanks, taking both his and Bilbo’s bags from the boot and resting them on the driveway. Bilbo staggered out with far less grace, leaning against the Ashpar where it was parked, the wheels caked in dust and dried mud.

“All right, Bilbo.” Thorin leaned in close, keeping his voice low. He wasted no time, resting one hand on the back window over Bilbo’s head. “What exactly happened to you?”

“I-I was walking on the street,” Bilbo cleared his throat. “Just minding my own business, when this garish white limousine pulled up beside me.”

“Stag hood ornament?” Bilbo nodded. Thorin gritted his teeth. “I despise that ridiculous vehicle.” He sighed. “Then what happened?”

“Well, I-I didn’t know what was going at first. I was just wrestled into the backseat. I lost my hat.” Bilbo self-consciously brushed his tousled curls with his fingertips. “It was Thranduil and this red-headed lady — Tauriel?” Thorin nodded.

“Tauriel’s a piece of work.” He muttered. “She’s been Thranduil’s right-hand advisor for hundreds of years. Keeps out of the public eye, but she’s never far from his side.”

“I saw her last night.” Bilbo admitted. “At the dinner. I bumped into her — quite literally — and she asked my name and who I was with, and…”

“Oh, Mahal.” Thorin groaned. “She got her little gremlins to telegram all over and track you down. Did they find out about your expertise?” Bilbo nodded. “Oh, damn it!” He brought his hand into a fist and thudded it against the window. “What did you tell them, Bilbo?” He gripped his arms now and Bilbo could feel the latch of the bonnet lid biting in between his shoulderblades. “Please, tell me you didn’t tell them about Erebor.” Fear flashed in his brilliant eyes. “Nothing is more important than keeping her safe from them. Nothing.”

“I pretended to be some country bumpkin on a holiday. Talked Thranduil’s ear off until he got bored with me.” Bilbo swallowed hard. “I— I think he believed me. He just let me go. Surely he wouldn’t have just let me go if he suspected me of anything.”

“Unless he thinks you’ll come running straight to me.” Thorin muttered. “All right — come inside.” He looked over his shoulder, paranoid, seeing nothing. “Wait in the kitchen. Make a cup of tea if you want; I must have a bag or two somewhere in the cabinet.” Thorin left his suitcase leaning against the wall and dashed into the sitting room. “I’ll make some calls and get to the bottom of this.” He sat down at the tiny phone desk, pulling the little pad of paper close and tearing off the top leaf.

“Thorin,” Bilbo’s voice sounded very small as he lurked in the doorway, uncertain, “wh-what’s going to happen to me?”

Thorin looked up, finger on the rotary dialler. “I don’t know.” He said evenly. “Please, go and wait into the kitchen and let me sort this out.”

It was the longest half hour of his life. Bilbo couldn’t bear to to sit down, so he paced, listening to the murmur of Thorin’s voice through the walls and the tick-tick-tick of the wall clock. He put the electric kettle on and eventually found a dusty, grey-looking teabag in the back of the pantry. There was no milk, and he put in three spoons of sugar, watching clouds of brown, as dark as dried blood, billow and twist until the water was muddy. He managed three sips and tipped the rest down the sink, watching it circle the drain and gurgle down into the earth.

Bilbo jumped at the footsteps behind him. “Yes?” He stood behind one of the mismatched chairs, and clutched at the back. “Wh-Who did you call?”

“Contacts.” Thorin said briskly. “Their names are irrelevant. They confirmed you were picked up and questioned by Thranduil two hours ago, and he had sent information requests to various addresses to ascertain who you were.” Bilbo nodded, feeling grey. “But,” he sighed, “Thranduil — well, I should say Tauriel — has not requested further surveillance.” His heart leaped. “Well done, Bilbo. You fooled the oldest person in Middle-Earth.”

His knees went weak. “Thranduil was clutching at straws, and he knew it.” Thorin continued. “You’re utterly unremarkable with a spotless record. It’s partly why Balin chose you.”

“Thank you?” Bilbo lifted his head. It wasn’t spotless; there was a glaring black mark on it, but as Thorin stared at him, he realised that Thorin had no idea about the finer details on it, even if Thranduil did. He had deeper feelers into Bilbo’s life, and it made him nervous to think about what else he could know that Thorin didn’t. What if he was two steps ahead of Thorin already, spying and plotting and watching their every footstep, unnoticed? But Thorin seemed utterly unperturbed at the situation, and all Bilbo could do was trust him at this point.

“We’re already very late.” Thorin turned away and into the entrance hall. “Can you put the bags in the back of the Ashpar? I have one last call to make.”

“O-Of course.” Bilbo pushed the chair back in, the legs screeching against the linoleum. “Oh, and Thorin?” Thorin paused and looked over his shoulder. “Thank you.” He grabbed fistfuls of his trousers and forced a nervous smile. “For— For not thinking I’m too dangerous to come.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” Thorin scoffed, but his voice was warm in its softness, and he smiled. “I would never leave you behind.” He inhaled sharply at that, as though he’d overstepped some mark, and self-consciously cleared this throat. “Won’t be a moment.”

Bilbo felt deliriously happy as he loaded their overnight bags into the back of the Ashpar and climbed inside. He rested the wrapped books on his knees and drummed his fingers against them, humming to himself. Finally, he knew why Thorin looked at him the way he did, why he maintained that artificial distance, why he played at being gruff and uncaring. Thorin felt something for him. Last night wasn’t a drunken mistake — it was Thorin showing his true feelings for the first time since they had met.

Thorin climbed silently into the automobile and started the engine. Bilbo couldn't bring himself to speak at first. He clung to that glimpse of Thorin’s vulnerable heart for as long as he could in the stillness. He bit back his words until they grew, hot and swollen on his tongue, and with a gasp, it all spilled out. "We can't keep this strictly professional, Thorin." He watched Thorin’s knuckles knuckles whiten and clench between thin tufts of dark hair. “Not now.”

Thorin licked his lips, the same wide-eyed terror in his eyes as Bilbo saw last night after their almost-kiss. “I know." He finally choked out, not daring to look at him. Bilbo fiddled with the radio when he realised the conversation was over. His heart thudded in his ears and he wanted to drown it out. He listened, eyes half-open, as the gentle sonata washed over him, and within half an hour, he was asleep. It was a much-needed sleep, deep and dreamless, and Bilbo didn’t rouse from it until he felt a firm shaking on his arm. His eyes snapped open with a gasp, and he rubbed blearily at his stiff neck.

“We’re here.” Thorin said primly, taking the key out of the ignition. Bilbo groaned and dug his thumbs into the corners of his eyes to try and clear them. “Good sleep?”

“Mm.” He yawned.

“I checked, but it looks like we weren’t followed. Not that I would expect us to be.” Bilbo brushed his hair back from his face. “Look — about our excursion,” his voice took on a new seriousness, and he fixed Bilbo with a hard stare. “I want to give the impression that nothing out of the ordinary happened, all right?”

“I know, you said.” Bilbo inhaled sharply. “Last night never happened. Understood, Thorin.”

“Not just last night.” But his eyes slid from Bilbo at that, and he faltered before continuing. “Thranduil. I’ll speak to Balin and Dwalin and perhaps Fili, but nobody else needs to know. It will just leave them unsettled.”

“Of course.” There was an impression that Thorin would change when he stepped out of the car, put up his outer guard again, and Bilbo would never get back in. Fear quickened his heart and as Thorin rested his hand on the latch, Bilbo started, reaching out and clutching his elbow. “Wait— Thorin.” He gasped. Thorin stilled. “Please, we have to talk about last night. Properly.”

Thorin shook his head, coming across gruff and distant. “I made a drunken error, Bilbo, and nothing more. I assure it you, it won’t happen again.”

“Because I— I wouldn’t mind,” his head was going all funny and dizzy again, and his own voice sounded thick and warbled in his ears, “i-if it did. You know.” Thorin’s gruffness softened into a thoughtful frown. It was a devastating moment, a chance Bilbo felt he would never have again. So he seized it with shaking hands. “Thorin,” Bilbo took in a deep breath, “I— I… I think that I—”

“Uncle Thorin!” They both gasped as Kili came seemingly out of nowhere, wrenching open the car door. Bilbo pulled his hand away and held it over his racing heart. “Where have you been?” Kili pulled at Thorin’s arm. “You have to come right now—”

“Mahal, Kili!” Thorin snapped, harsher than he should, as the moment was broken. Bilbo winced. “Give me five minutes to get out of the car!”

“They did it!” Balin and Fili were approaching the car now, jogging across the gravel. “They did it, Thorin. They broke into the mountain!”

Thorin froze, and Bilbo’s heart leaped. “What?” He breathed.

“They’ve been making a tunnel entrance big enough for us to all fit in. Bofur poked his torch in, but he wants you and Bilbo to be the first. He said it was a massive hall. Couldn’t make out much, but there were runes and pictures carved on these gigantic pillars and—”

“Move.” Thorin pushed Kili out of the way and jumped out of the Ashpar. “Come on, Bilbo.” He didn’t look back. “We’ve got a gold-hoard to find.” Kili flashed a grin at him and slammed the door shut. Bilbo watched through the window as Thorin talked to Balin, who was gesturing frantically at the mountain behind them with a grin that stretched from ear to ear.

“Coming." Bilbo whispered, alone and defeated.


	11. Chapter 11

“Are you sure about this?”

Bilbo nodded. Bofur fastened the helmet strap under his chin and gently knocked him on the temple to make sure it was steady. Thorin was staring at him with his sleeves rolled up to the elbow, arms folded across his chest. He had changed into a button-down khaki shirt over darker olive-green trousers and sturdy boots. With his helmet, he looked like an explorer out of a children’s book, handsome and fearless. Bilbo rapped his knuckles on the tin and felt the vibrations against his skull. “Sturdy.” Blindly, he groped for the brass lantern on his head. The garish electric light shone in the greying afternoon, washing Bofur’s face a sickly yellowish-white.

“This is just a cursory inspection.” Thorin warned. “We won’t be long. If you feel apprehensive at any point, we can turn around.”

“I’m not afraid, Thorin.” Bilbo squared his shoulders and tried to look brave, even though his heart pounded and there was a thin film of sweat on his palms. He was slightly stooped under the weight of the transmitter strapped to his back — military issue, less expensive than the portable models used in aircraft and very heavy. Thorin insisted it was just a precaution, and they weren’t expected to really use it. “Let’s go and see what’s inside.”

“Very well.” Thorin gave him a long look, studying him. It was different to how Bilbo remembered his usual stare — less cool, more concerned. “I’ll lead the way.” The others crowded around the pair, slapping them on the back and wringing their hands and wishing them the very best of luck. It was decided that a rope would be more of a hindrance than a help, and Thorin slung an empty pack over one shoulder, taking only a flask of water and a brown-box camera. Bilbo looked up at the jagged face of the mountain and swallowed. From this angle, it seemed to stretch on forever and ever, and Bilbo couldn’t make out the point where the rock ended and the sky began. How much had the dwarves hollowed out a thousand years before? There was still no consensus over what they would find — a few caves, a vast underground metropolis or anything in between.

It was a tiny hole cut out of the stone, small as a dolls’ house door. It was the third attempt to bore into the mountain, littered with broken bits of stone and cracked bolts and loose pieces of wire as the machinery was hastily fixed while it slowly broke down under the stress of drilling relentlessly through rock. The real front gate, Ori quickly ascertained, was actually between two jagged slopes in the foothills, facing exactly south. The rock formation was unnatural — although it looked as craggy and wild as the rest of the mountain, Ori insisted that whatever stonework that once existed had been systematically chipped and chiselled away. It was calculated, deliberate, and would have taken considerable effort.

“Here we go.” Thorin breathed, switching on his headlamp before stepping inside. With the encouraging cries of Kili and Bofur at his back, Bilbo held his breath and followed. It was narrow enough for his fingertips to touch both sides if he stretched out his arms, and about a foot or so over his head. The air quickly cooled. Bilbo felt gooseflesh spread along his arms, bare to the elbow, and a cold shiver made his neck twitch.

Bilbo winced as he stubbed his toe on a loose rock that had never been collected, leaning against the wall with a soft hiss. Thorin stopped and turn back, the light shining right into Bilbo’s eyes. “I’m all right.” he shielded his face and squinted through his fingers. “Just a rock. Give me a moment.”

“Are you afraid?” The deep rumble of Thorin’s voice calmed him. Bilbo rubbed at his bruised toe and shook his head.

“Of the dark?” He smiled. “No. Not really.” Not that.

They continued on. The only sound Bilbo could make out was the shuffle of feet on stone and the low rush of their breathing. The other dwarves were long gone. It was only Bilbo and Thorin, walking in tandem into the unknown. His heart was pounding — what if the tunnel collapsed behind them and they were either crushed to death or left to starve and suffocate? What if Bilbo tripped and fell down some chasm and broke his neck? What if Smaug was more than just a legend and he still slumbered down here, waiting for someone to come and rouse him from his endless hibernation?

Despite all of these fears, Bilbo pressed on. His curiosity and determination to see this all through ran deeper than any of his fears. He had lost out on so much in life with his early exit from university — his education, his career, his future. Despite the questionable legality of this entire operation, Bilbo knew it was the last chance he would ever get to really, truly make his mark on the world, to prove to himself, to the memory of his parents, to his sneering lecturers who said he wasted his time studying the scratchings of a band of savages, to those who had believed in him and to those who doubted him. He followed Thorin with his head held high, iron-shod on his resolve and refusing to let those fears get the better of him.

Finally, the tunnel opened out. It was a slight climb down; Thorin went first and held his arms out, gruffly offering to take Bilbo. He accepted (of course), a thrum of excitement dancing in his chest as Thorin took him around the waist and carried him with ease, transmitter and all. Bilbo closed his eyes and held onto Thorin’s shoulders, too frightened to speak or even breathe. The strain of Thorin’s muscles against his sides and the small of his back. One hand moved down and cupped Bilbo’s rear end through his trousers, trying to hold him up, and Bilbo felt the touch with the heat and the violent jolt of an electric shock, biting down hard on his tongue to keep from crying out. Thorin’s breath halted against his neck, in terror or exhaustion, Bilbo didn’t know. He hoped that it was the former.

All too soon, Thorin set him down. Rather wobbly from the excitement, it took a moment for Bilbo to find his feet again and compose himself. He turned to Thorin and set the torch on him, wanting to study his face — was he pleased? Embarrassed? Bashful? Afraid? — but it was washed-out in the harsh battery light, and Thorin squinted away from him, sheltering his eyes with one hand.

“Look.” Thorin looked up, the beam of his torch following his gaze as he pointed. Oh yes. For a few delicious moments, Bilbo had forgotten about Erebor, about their expedition — indeed, about everything in the world except for the feeling of Thorin’s arms around him — and with a gasp he was pulled back into reality, staring at the circle of light ahead of him. There was a sense in the air around them that they stood in a very vast hall. Bilbo followed the smooth wall up and up and up, but his own light disappeared into the darkness, impenetrable.

Thorin pulled a thick piece of chalk out of his pocket and made a large ‘X’ on the wall beside them. “Mahal.” he started to walk, slowly, in a dream. “Look at this place. It’s unbelievable.”

“It looks like Moria.” Bilbo followed him, taking as much as he could. Massive archways ran along to their left as they walked, the columns carved in interlocking geometric squares and bands. Thorin stopped every ten steps to make another mark on the wall and guide their way. “These big archways, you know. That’s _so_ interesting, Thorin. It’s still not clear who settled first and hollowed it all out and who invaded who. Maybe… Maybe if Erebor looks like this, it was dwarves who created Moria after all.”

“This is phenomenal.” The passage seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction. On an impulse, he turned left, making his way along a stone walkway suspended over a pool of darkness. Bilbo followed, keeping close now, their elbows touching. “I must admit, Bilbo, I wasn’t sure of what we would find.”

“I wasn’t either.” Bilbo found himself whispering, pressed as close to Thorin as he dared. It still wasn’t certain — their torches were tiny pinpricks of yellow in the darkness. Despite the endless nothingness around them both, Bilbo felt increasingly claustrophobic. There was only one tiny little escape hatch in this maze of stone — one wrong turn, and chalk and transmitter or not, they could be lost forever. “I hope it’s still all safe.”

“What’s a thousand years to stone?” Thorin whispered back. But he kept the light of his electric torch on the ground, watching his feet for any cracks. The walkway gave into a staircase, curving around a wide corner and going down. The pair walked slowly, elbows continuing to touch. “I wonder if there’s anything alive down here.” The dwarf breathed in Bilbo’s air, afraid to break the stillness of the air. “Spiders, bats, fish, moss. It can’t all be dead.”

“I don’t know.” Bilbo craned his neck and tried to look up, but he could make out nothing. Thorin scratched another cross on the wall. “If there’s still running water, there could be life. Ori might know.” The staircase turned left onto a wide landing, and they both stopped, peering out. Something gleamed back in the darkness, and the pair shuffled forward, craning their necks and squinting. His hobbitish curiosity got the better of him, and Bilbo walked right to the very edge of the landing, straining to see.

“Bilbo, come back.” Thorin whispered, not wanting to risk a tussle. “You don’t know how far down that goes.”

“Oh, ten or twenty feet?” Bilbo looked down, making out the ground. “Thorin — that’s gold. Look!” Thorin set down his pack and pulled out a second electric torch, this one more powerful. He switched it on, and they both reeled back as the bright light cut through the suffocating blackness, impossibly dazzling. It was all gold. The air was knocked out of Bilbo’s lungs. The _entire_ hall was full of gold and gems, piled far above their heads; a literal mountain. It had to be worth billions of pounds. Bilbo stammered something incomprehensible, shaking his head, and Thorin stood very still, his mouth open as he slowly ran the torch over the scene. It was beyond anything Bilbo had dared to imagine. There was a wanton hubris in the way it had been stacked here so carelessly, uncountable in its greatness, inviting people to come and look. Surely the king of Erebor didn’t store his treasure like this, so openly, in such an easily accessible hall. Surely not.

A dark shape appeared at the edge of the circle of light. With a low rumble in his throat, Thorin focused on it. It was a massive and curved, with jagged spikes along the top. At first, Bilbo thought it was some sort of fallen log or carved statue. How peculiar, he pondered, watching Thorin run his torch along the shape, and more came into view. It was half-covered in gold, but jagged protrusions were still visible. They almost looked like…

Bilbo gasped, too afraid to scream, curling instinctively into Thorin’s side and clutching his arm, heart beating very fast in his little chest. _Smaug_. They were staring at his half-buried head. The so-called scientific explanations of volcanic activity were complete lies. The dragon was real, and it still lay here, slumbering on his bed of dwarven gold. Panting in his terror, Bilbo squeezed his eyes shut, feeling Thorin tense against him. “Oh— Oh Eru.” he choked out, legs turning to jelly. “Oh—”

“Bilbo!” Thorin hissed in his ear. “Bilbo, it’s all right.” There was a strong hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Bilbo opened his eyes and saw through the haze of electric light Thorin’s face, softened in concern. “It’s dead.”

“What?” Bilbo drew back.

“It’s dead. Look.” Thorin had his torch pointed at the dragon’s snout. He was right; the eyesockets were black, empty holes beneath sagging brownish scales, the eyes long rotted away. Sealed in this tomb, Smaug had dried out like a smoked fish, untouched.

“Oh!” Bilbo’s face flushed. “I thought…”

“So did I, at first.” Thorin said grimly. “Are you all right?”

Bilbo held a hand over his chest. His heart was still thumping madly, and he could feel embarrassment claim him slowly, from the tops of his toes all the way to the crown of his head. He was suddenly glad for the darkness.

“Er, I will be.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Thorin, it’s just— I didn’t expect that we would find a dragon had existed at all, let alone the petrified remains of one.” Beneath his helmet, Bilbo could feel his hair grow damp and sticky with sweat. “I got quite a fright.”

“Indeed.” Thorin looked down at him, all shadows and angles and a harsh white glare, and cleared his throat, tugging politely. Only then did Bilbo realise that he was still clinging to Thorin’s arm.

“Oh!” He let go, wiping his sweaty hands on his trousers. “S-Sorry, Thorin. I’m all right now, really.”

“All the same,” Thorin gave the treasure hall another once-over with his torch. “I think we should take some quick photographs and turn back. This is enough excitement for one day. Do you mind standing over there and holding the torch?”

Bilbo played the light technician while Thorin took a few photographs with his camera, the flash paltry and pale in the enormity of this darkness. Thorin was strangely quiet on the walk back, and flatly ignored Bilbo’s few tentative questions. He looked wrapped up in his own world, staring very hard into the darkness at something lost and invisible. Bilbo knew him well enough to leave alone. His own head was crammed full to burst with what he had seen — how could so much gold be locked away down here, undisturbed? Who had broken down the front gate? Did they know about this? What else was this mountain hiding? Surely, a culture capable of amassing such a monumental gold-hoard would have records somewhere, histories, poems. Bilbo didn’t have much hope of finding a book in these charred ruins, but he knew how to uncover stories elsewhere — inscriptions on sword-hilts and shields and arm-bands and trophies, engravings on tombs, statues, wall-carvings. Beneath the blanket of shock, a thrum of excitement was building in Bilbo’s chest as he realised just what he was on the verge of discovering.

“How was it?” Kili grabbed Bilbo’s arm as soon as he made it back to the outside world. “What did you see? Was there any gold? Did you take anything back?” The dwarves crowded around the pair, their faces pale in the dusk, teeth gleaming. Their voices all ran together and Bilbo stammered something about a hall so impossibly tall they couldn’t see the ceiling, but his voice was lost in the hubbub. Thorin, however, had wrestled free of the excitable ring of bodies, and walked briskly back towards the camp with his pack hanging off one shoulder and helmet under his arm.

“Uncle?” Fili was the first to realise he’d even left. The others froze, and a hush fell over the knot of dwarves. “Are you all right?” He called out, frowning.

Thorin stopped but didn’t look back. “I’m fine.” He was short and sharp and clipped. Bilbo winced. “I need a few moments alone, Fili. I shall join you later.”

“What did you see?” Kili demanded. “Was it really disappointing?” Fili broke from the group and tried to follow his uncle but was stopped by Balin’s hand on his arm. The elder dwarf slipped away instead and jogged to catch up with Thorin, but the rest remained, listening.

“O-Oh, no, it wasn’t.” Bilbo swallowed, staring at the expectant faces before him. “We walked right into Erebor’s gold-hoard. Smaug must have gathered it.”

Kili’s face lit up. “ _Really?”_ He clapped his hands together. “ _Yes!_ How big was it, if you had to put a price-tag on it? What’s it worth, do you think?”

“Kili don’t be crass.” Fili cuffed him over the head. “It’s not about the money.”

“No, but it’s ours if we find it, isn’t it? I just wanna know how rich we are. Go on Bilbo, guess.” He beamed.

“I can’t.” Bilbo said honestly. “Hundreds of millions? Billions?” He shrugged, raising his hands up to shoulder height, palms open. There was a hum of excitement and disbelief at that. “I can’t, Kili. It’s— You have to see it. Words can’t describe it.”

“Wonder why Thorin’s all glum?” Ori piped up. “Surely he’d be happy? That’s what we wanted to see, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.” Bilbo looked over at Thorin’s retreating figure. “I-I suppose he’s just thinking about what could have been. He would have been a great king, this Thror. Maybe even the richest king in all of Middle-Earth.”

“Come now, no use standing about in the dust talking of this.” Dori squeezed his brother’s shoulder. “Let’s go inside and have something to eat.”

 

* * *

Thorin didn’t join them for supper. The others chattered excited, wrung more questions out of Bilbo even though he’d already repeated the story with all the detail he could remember at least half a dozen times. Bilbo tried to ask Balin if Thorin was all right in a rare moment of quiet, but he just sadly shook his head.

So Bilbo scraped a bowl of cold stew from the bottom of the pot and and slipped away, promising he would be back in fifteen minutes. He hissed in the dark as the icy wind cut against his face, jogging with his head down towards Thorin’s tent, where a lantern gleamed inside.

“I brought you something.” Bilbo ducked in, not wanting to stand about in the cold a moment longer. Thorin was sitting on the edge of his low stretched with his head bent almost between his knees. His hair was unbraided, falling over his shoulders and arms in soft curls, the flecks of grey gleaming against raven-black. With a sharp intake of breath, Thorin lifted his head. He looked haggard in this light, his usually-bright eyes dim. Bilbo forced a smile and held out his peace offering, heart thumping in his chest at this intrusion. “Eat. You didn’t even have breakfast.”

For a moment, a stern frown flickered across Thorin’s tired face. The lines deepened on his forehead and he opened his mouth, ready to rebuke Bilbo for his thoughtless disruption. But Bilbo, who had learned by now, remained calm and smiling and honest in the face of Thorin’s sharpness, utterly unapologetic. “Thank you, Bilbo.” Thorin softened and reached out. Their fingers touched around the chipped enamel bowl. Bilbo enjoyed the thrill silently, close enough now to notice Thorin’s jaw tighten as he fought back a sudden inhale of air at the contact. Thorin rested the bowl on his knees and stared down at the tinned meat and limp vegetables swimming in a few inches of gravy. “You don’t have to stay,” He murmured, so soft that Bilbo almost missed it.

“I want to.” Bilbo insisted, grabbing handfuls of his trousers to counteract the throbbing in his limbs. He ached for Thorin, the only other soul who had seen what he had seen, who realised just how much was hidden beneath that mountain, who understood how great the dwarves would have been in another life. “Can I?”

Thorin nodded. “Sit.” He shuffled over to give Bilbo a little more space and stretched out his legs as much as the tent allowed. Bilbo complied, folding his hands in his lap and listening to Thorin eat. He didn't slurp and chew like his fellow dwarves; like everything else he did, Thorin ate with a measured consideration of every mouthful, efficient and polite.

“Are you all right?” Bilbo asked after a short interlude. “You seemed to be in a daze before.”

Thorin’s shoulders slumped, and he cupped the bowl in both hands. “No.” His lips barely moved. “I'm not all right, Bilbo.”

“Talk to me.” He begged. “Please. Let me in.” Thorin stared at the canvas wall of the tent, his face partially obscured by his beautiful hair. “Let me try to understand.”

“You couldn't ever possibly understand.” Thorin heaved, low and unusually vicious. Bilbo drew back. “That— That was the hoard of a king— an emperor. That's more wealth than our government takes in tax in a decade. It's _impossible._ How could we go as a people to something so base and broken? How could we just give up?” He turned to look at Bilbo now, shrunken, withered. “How could we become so abject?”

“I don't know.” Bilbo murmured sadly. “I suppose… generations of servitude turned to centuries and it slipped out of memory and history. It became a myth.” But it wasn't good enough for Thorin. He shook his head and dragged one wrist across his tired eyes, still cupping his half-eaten stew in his other hand. He looked so worn and defeated, and Bilbo kindly heart bled in a renewed sharp stab of empathy. “I'll find answers.” He promised. “That's why I'm here, isn't it? I swear, Thorin, I'll do all I can to make sense of this.” In an effort to comfort him, Bilbo rested his hand on Thorin’s wrist, not considering what he was actually doing. Thorin gasped at the touch and jerked away, slipping gravy all over his trousers as the bowl tumbled to the ground, gluggy stew and limp vegetables oozing onto the dirt.

“Oh!” Mortified, Bilbo scrabbled about for his handkerchief. Thorin stared wordlessly down at the mess, stew dripping from his hand and into the ground. “Here— let me— Oh, Thorin I'm so sorry.” Bilbo dabbed at the stain on Thorin’s thigh, flustered. “I'll get it out, I promise. I'm so sorry—” His heart leaping in his throat, Bilbo looked up, and their eyes met. Thorin stared with his lips _just_ parted, his breathing ragged and shallow, hands balled into the weave of his military-issue blanket. His hands stilled, one on Thorin’s knee, holding himself up, the other on the inside of Thorin’s thigh, his handkerchief doing little more than smearing it all around.

 _Move,_ he screamed to himself, shivering under that stare, more confused and open and _vulnerable_ than Bilbo ever remembered seeing Thorin. He felt the muscles tense under his hand, thick and powerful, his heart throbbing in his skull as he remained sitting beside Thorin, touching him in a place reserved only for lovers. And Thorin kept on staring with that same confusion. They were locked together, too terrified to pull apart but unsure of how to go on from this.

Thorin’s voice cracked in his throat as he tried to speak. “B-Bilbo—” it was fragmented, without that normal richness to it. It was both terrible and wonderful. “What were going to say to me in the car?”

“What?” Bilbo breathed, his hand curling tighter around Thorin’s knee, digging in.

“In the Ashpar. When I said last night wouldn’t happen again.” His words were short and precise, but every syllable was strained, taking great effort. Thorin’s chest visibly hitched, and Bilbo could feel himself coming undone. “What were you going to say?”

Somehow, Bilbo managed to breathe. He felt dizzy. “I was going to say that I— I wouldn’t mind.” He finally choked out. “If it did.”

Thorin’s beautiful eyes widened, the knot in his throat bobbing up and down beneath the shadow of dark hair as he swallowed hard. Every heartbeat was a hammer against Bilbo’s ribs, painful and deafening, his body vibrating from the impact. His hand on Thorin’s thigh flattened out, the handkerchief abandoned, and he slid upwards half an inch, afraid to move any further, feeling the muscles beneath his palm tense and strain until they trembled. Their eyes remained locked on each other, drunk, mad with a tumultuous passion that heaved and writhed beneath the surface.

“You have to go.” Thorin choked out, unable to bear it. “Bilbo, we can’t.” Bilbo’s heart sank in his chest, a stone, a lump of ice, and his stomach cramped painfully. “We can’t.” The dwarf repeated, as though he was trying to convince himself, colour rising on his cheeks above the brushstrokes of his beard.

“Why not?” Immediately, Bilbo regretted saying it. It sounded whiny and petulant and demanding, and his insides shrivelled with self-loathing. He was pathetic in his violent desperation, clinging to Thorin’s thigh, feeling him slipping away with every pounding roar of his heart.

“No.” The word seemed to give Thorin a physical blow. With a low groan, looking enfeebled, Thorin pulled free and broke the spell. His hair fell wildly over his shoulders, eyes bright and savage as the colour pulsed in his cheeks. Bilbo remained on the bed, clutching at nothing, breathing very hard now. “You have to go.” He tried to be typically measured and precise, but Thorin’s voice was trembling. Bilbo shook his head, biting down on his lip to fight back the desperate begging. “ _Please_ , Bilbo.” His voice rose and terror flashed in those bright, brilliant eyes, showing how deeply he suffered in this agonising moment.

With his palms slick and ears ringing, Bilbo left. He felt raw and open, a half-healed wound that had been unbandaged too soon. Outside, he staggered in the darkness, blind, the mountain-wind wailing in his ears. Bilbo swore in the darkness, spitting out the very worst word that he knew, and without any mercy, the howling wind carried it away.


	12. Chapter 12

Bilbo tossed and turned, the plastic sleeping bag rustling with every movement, listening to the relentless whining of the air, the distant rumble of the generator and chatter of speech punctuated with semi-frequent laughter. They celebrated their unexpected windfall over tea with a little rum and a wrapped fruitcake Bombur had kept aside for a special treat. Bilbo lay awake and wondered if they even missed him, working himself into a deep funk in his depressed isolation. He felt as though he could never be happy again.

Finally, the mechanical rumbling ceased and the laughter faded. Bilbo sighed as he stretched out on his back, counting to a hundred, then two, his stubborn mind constantly drifting, refusing to lapse into sleep. Anger flushed in Bilbo’s chest. How did Thorin even have the right to do this to him? How could he rob Bilbo of his first real chance in two decades to actually feel proud about something? The joy and excitement of finding all that gold was tainted with the memory of Thorin avoiding him, drawing back, voice breaking in his throat.

Bilbo turned on the electric torch to see the time. It was almost one. Conceding that sleep was still a long way off, he swung his legs over the side of the cot and groped about in the shadows for his coat. He pulled it on and wrapped it tight around him, hissing as he stepped into the midnight wind. Perhaps a cup of tea could soothe his frazzled nerves. The insulated tank of water was still warm enough to the touch and Bilbo poured a cup with the torch jammed between his chin and neck. The first sip was delicious; he hummed to himself as he took a seat at the long folding table, tucking one leg beneath him and letting the other swing freely, turning off his torch to save the battery.

His mind began to wander in the faded quietness of the night, listening to the thin, distant snore of some sleeping dwarf, the fading whistle of the wind, the loose fluttering of the tent flap. It was serene, this sort of abandonment. Bilbo really felt as though he was the only person in the entire world that even existed in a world covered by darkness. He fell more alone than he ever had before, even surrounded by a dozen sleeping dwarves who would will happily count him among their many friends.

The soft crunch of footsteps in the loose stones growing slow made Bilbo start and grasp for his torch. He fumbled one-handed with the switch, but before he could turn it on, a shadow loomed in the thin curtain of moonlight, short and stout in a heavy coat with military-square shoulders and hair close-cropped at the temples, standing on end at the top. Fili.

What struck Bilbo above all else was his ragged, uneasy breathing as he entered the mess tent, as though he had been running for miles and miles, and his odd, stumbling gait. At first, Bilbo wondered if he was drunk. Fili staggered towards the billy of water and reached for the faucet, fingertips skimming over the metal with practiced ease. All of a sudden, Fili, who must have heard the minute rustle of his clothing, jumped in the darkness, peering in Bilbo’s direction, breath held.

“Who's there?” He hissed, a half-formed shadow in the sliver of moonlight. “Who is that?”

“Me.” Caught, Bilbo flicked on the torch, a circle of yellow light surrounding Fili, the centre of a target. “Sorry, I-I didn't mean to startle you. I couldn't sleep.”

“Ah.” Fili rested a hand over his heaving chest. “It's all right, Bilbo.” He poured himself tea, steam furling weakly from the chipped in mug, and sat across from Bilbo at the end of the long mess table. Deep shadows ringed his blue eyes, and Bilbo could see a lingering film of sweat on his forehead.

“Are you all right?” He inquired in his usual blunt, forward way. “Are you coming down with something?”

Fili let out a dry, hollow chuckle, and shook his head. “No, not really.” He took a sip of his lukewarm tea and grimaced. “Just– trouble sleeping. Must be the mountain air. Mind if I...” Fili extracted a rather crumpled packet of cigarettes from his coat with a weak smile.

“No, no, go on.” Bilbo bit the inside of his cheek, disbelieving. He still remembered, clearly, the morning he inadvertently overheard Fili assuring his uncle that he was all right, that he had been examined, whatever that meant. He watched Fili light up, the tiny circle of orange light wavering in the darkness as he deeply inhaled, dancing and vibrating in his shaking hands.

“It must be good to be back, though.” Bilbo chose every word carefully. “After being away from home for so long. It sounds awful, over there, in the papers.” Fili stiffened at that, and Bilbo knew in a heartbeat he had poked the eye of a sleeping beast locked deep inside Fili's head. “I know how hard it can be to talk about things, Fili, especially when people insist on seeing the best of you. And family, they’re the hardest of all to confide in.”

Fili set down his mug and hid one hand under the table as he breathed in. “Kili told me.” He murmured, looking both conspirital and apologetic. “A-About university. Why you never finished your doctorate. I beg your pardon if this sounds rude, but…” He trailed off, quiet and thoughtful as he stared down into his cooling tea. “You really don’t look like someone who had a breakdown and went around the bend, i-if you understand me.”

“Ah.” Bilbo swallowed. “Well, they say it’s those who you don’t expect, don’t they? That’s the nature of the beast.” Fili managed a weak smile, one hand still hidden under the desk. “I know someone who had shell-shock.” Bilbo spoke up after a moment of quietness. Fili went tense, eyes fixed on a chip in the tabletop varnish. “This man who served in Forodwaith. Sold his flat in Gundabad and came out to the Shire with his wife, and they built a little farmhouse a few miles out of Hobbiton to settle down. No children. Wanted the quiet life. He was an odd fellow. I liked him. His left arm had been blown off in the trenches, but he used to bicycle into the village nearly every day.” Bilbo smiled faintly. “He was one of my most frequent customers. Always buying old paperbacks – history, fiction, poetry, theatre, biographies – anything that caught his fancy. He must have bought a thousand books, and he read them all. Never anything about the military. I distinctly remember that. We had a pint at the Green Dragon together, once or twice. Then one day, he stopped coming. Just out out of the blue.” Bilbo’s hands closed around his mug, but it was cool now, offering no comfort. Fili crushed out the stub of his cigarette and listened. “I saw his wife a week later, all in black. It turned out he got up in the night, walked into the backyard shed, and blown off his head with his hunting rifle.”

He sighed deeply, feeling grey from the memory. “That’s just how it was. Nobody talked about that sort of thing, even when the signs were right in front of us. It just wasn’t right to do so.” Bilbo’s eyes flicked upwards to Fili’s shadowed face. “But you know what’s not right? Doing nothing. I look back now, and I could see that he was hurting, even if he didn’t mention it.” Fili tapped his fingers against the cigarette packet, considering another. “I know it can be dangerous, being alone for too long in your head.” Bilbo ventured. Yvannah, he certainly knew that. “Sometimes, it helps to talk and–”

“I appreciate your concern, Bilbo,” Fili's voice was warm but firm. “but honestly, I'm fine. Just can't sleep, is all.” With a forced smile, he swept his cigarettes into the pocket of his soldier's coat and picked up his tea. “But I should try again. Big day ahead of us tomorrow, exploring that mountain.”

“Yes, big day.” Bilbo echoed, defeated. “Good night, Fili.”

* * *

The morning air was clear and bright. A thrush sang. A rumble of song hung in the mess tent, grins wide around their mugs of tea. Even Thorin smiled. Bilbo watched from the far end of the table at Ori's elbow. Their eyes met once, Thorin's conversation with Balin breaking mid-sentence at an awkward pause.

While the others lingered over their last spoonfuls of porridge, Thorin slipped out. Bilbo followed, leaving his breakfast behind, just catching his retreating figure vanish in their shared study tent. Emboldened in his resolve, Bilbo kept his shoulders square and his chin up, assuming an air of imperious confidence, doing his best to ignore the throbbing deep in his chest and the trickle of sweat down the small of his back.

“Thorin.” He jumped at the sound of his name, bent over a stack of papers, rifling through them and taking nothing. Caught off-guard, Thorin could only stare, his eyes wide, at this Bilbo that was completely unknown to the world. “I've been up all night, agonising over you.” Bilbo kept his voice low but clear, every word firm. “Wondering how I could be stupid enough to fall for you. Thinking about how I could convince you and win you over.” He let out a wry chuckle. “I even contemplated crawling right into bed with you to show what you've been missing out on.” Thorin clutched the papers close to his chest, not daring to speak. As Bilbo spoke, little by little, that rock-steady resolve began to chip away. Every breath Thorin took, every flicker of those beautiful eyes, every twitch in his face, it was another blow of the hammer. He broke for air and collected his thoughts, forcing himself to look past Thorin as a physical object and into that mind that was both intimate and alien to him, remembering the agony and frustration and heart-breaking sorrow that he had suffered in the last day alone. “It's mad. That's what you've _done,_ Thorin. You've driven me mad.” A hand passed through his bedraggled hair. “A-And I realise that I can't do it anymore. I've barely known you a week and I already love you so much that it's made me senseless. I would throw myself off this mountain for you in a heartbeat.”

“So, I've had enough.” Bilbo declared, faded as sun-bleached wallpaper in a grandmother’s sitting-room. “I just can't go on like this. And I won't.” Thorin slowly lowered the papers, his stare crippling Bilbo’s soul. With a short, sharp intake of air, he stepped towards Thorin and gripped his forearms, feeling the ropes of muscle strain beneath his palms. Standing on the tips of his bare toes, Bilbo stretched his little body as tall as he could and pressed his mouth against Thorin’s. It was a rash, unconscionable decision, and at once Bilbo was both elated and horrified to have done it. Their chests touched, and Thorin’s ribs heaved against him. He tore his arms free and gripped Bilbo by the biceps, as though to push him away. But he didn’t; nor did Thorin draw him in closer. He remained suspended in that moment of indecision while Bilbo kissed him, the scrape of that thick but close-cropped beard against his face, touching the corners of his mouth, as sharp as needles in this moment of heightened over-feeling.

They both gasped when Bilbo drew back. Thorin’s cheeks were flushed and eyes more alert than Bilbo had ever seen them. Bilbo’s arms slipped through his fingers and he panted, the fingertips of his right hand gently covering his slack mouth. “So come to me.” The kiss sparked something inside of Bilbo, and he was flush with confidence again, this time without any niggling voices or unease. His mind and body in its entirety yearned for Thorin in this moment, and Bilbo felt certain that he had won. “Tonight, after the others are asleep. I’ll wait up for you.” The air was choked and stilted in Thorin’s lungs. “If you don’t come by midnight, then it’s done, for ever. I won’t try again.” Thorin slowly lowered his hand. “But come. I promise, Thorin, you will never regret it.”

And with that, Bilbo left. He backed away from Thorin and turned his face to the mountain wind. The sweat was cold on his forehead and the back of his neck, and he shivered. Inside, though, it was like a basket of coals, burning and burning, his heart throbbing white-hot inside his chest as his skin glowed. Even the sun, watery and insignificant in the eastern corner of the sky, seemed weak.

* * *

 

They congregated at the mouth of the tunnel. Thorin split them into groups of four or five, and Bilbo was paired with Bifur, Nori, Oin and Gloin, tasked with note-taking and keeping a rough map. After their daring exploration the day before, Thorin kept the brief simple – observe, annotate, explore, and under no circumstances, touch.

It was slow going. Old Oin complained that his joints were stiff in the cold air, and he rested often. Bifur, signing in working-class Iglishmek that only Nori could understand, insisted on testing every passageway before entering it with a little silver hammer and a strange ear-trumpet. But everything was sound, even after the vast passages of time, and they found their expedition largely unimpeded. With the dazzling flash on his camera, Nori photographed constantly, eyes gleaming at the murals and columns and archways, envisioning the wealth that must have existed here, once.

The little group found themselves walking along a wide promenade next to a inky-black body of water, shivering in the dead air. Along the cliff-face, wide homes had been hollowed out, and beneath the blackened scorch-marks, Bilbo ran his fingers along the carvings into handsome gold plaques, denoting the residents long past. Northri Iron-Shod, Frar Flame-Beard, Skafi Strong-Arm. Bilbo read them aloud and wrote them down. Every rune was a treasure. They searched inside these homes, but found only fragments – broken pieces of pottery and half-melted goblets and scraps of cloth so rotted and mouldy it was impossible to tell what shape or colour they had been. Still, every discovery sent a thrum of excitement through Bilbo’s chest. So much was already new – the way these houses were laid out (it seemed they all had their own lavatory, which suggested there was once plumbing; a monumental find), the masonwork (they must have calculated the weight of the stone down to the ounce to get those beautiful squared arches). To most, it would have looked heavy and ugly, but Bilbo saw a calculated geometric precision, a reverence for right angles and perfect squares. He couldn’t resist touching it, feeling the coolness of the stone beneath his fingertips. A thrum of excitement rushed in his chest at the realisation that he was the very first person to touch this stone after over fifteen hundred years. This was forbidden, and Bilbo was in on the secret.

“Nah, couldn’t do it.” Bilbo took lunch on the edge of the promenade, overlooking the black water, and the others waited with him. It was just slightly stale shortbread and now-cold tea in a dented thermos, but he ate ravenously, his stomach aching with the excitement. Nori rested casually in his shirtsleeves, leaning back on his left hand with his knee drawn up, his right wrist draped across it as he toyed with a bit of stone he’d found. “All this _blackness_. I mean, one slip and–” He clicked his tongue. “Y’know? Couldn’t stick the mines for that reason. Fourteen hours of this every day? I’d rather work in Dori’s dreadful tea house.”

Bifur signed something with his hands, slurring something unintelligible under his breath, and Nori chuckled. “What did he say?” Bilbo piped up, wiping the last of the crumbs from around his mouth.

“That I wouldn’t have lasted a day anyway. Didn’t have the guts for it.” Nori looked up at the ceiling, looking wistful. “Still… You _feel_ something about this, don’t you? Like you’re a part of something bigger.”

“My father always said we were royalty. Insisted it. All the dwarrows used to mock him and call him King Groin when he walked in the street.” Oin sighed. “If only he could see all this.”

There was a heavy, pregnant pause. “I’ll get proof.” Bilbo promised quietly in the gloom. “All the gold and gems aside, there’s got to be texts that show how educated and cultured the Longbeards were in the past. How the rest of the world knew about them.”

“That’s what drives me up the wall.” Nori sat up properly, turning the piece of stone over and over in his hands. “Thranduil, right, he _must_ have known about this. This is a massive dwarvish kingdom less than a hundred miles from his old palace. He’s been ruling over the Greenwood since the Second Age. There’s no chance he just forgot about the dwarves or knew about them at all. None.”

There was an uncomfortable prickle in the back of Bilbo’s neck. He’d been thinking the same too. “I don’t want to call it a conspiracy,” he said carefully, remembering all-too-clearly the unfortunate incident in Thranduil’s car. “Not yet. But something strange is going on, and we have to figure it out.”

* * *

 

It wasn’t until the evening that Bilbo remembered the little bundle of wrapped books now lying in his trunk beneath his second-best knitted vest. In the rush of the past two days, of Thranduil, discovering Smaug’s corpse and the gold, and his ultimatum to Thorin, he had completely forgotten about it. Guilt thrummed in his chest, and Bilbo cursed his selfishness. After dinner, he managed to catch Kili by the elbow before he got into a game of cards with Dwalin and Fili. “Er, I have something for you.” Bilbo kept his voice low, watching Thorin out of the corner of his eye. “I bought you a present while I was town.”

“A present?” Kili beamed. “For _me?_ ”

“Come – it’s in my tent.” Bilbo slipped out and Kili followed him, their shoulders hunched against the wind.

“I got the idea at a tea shop, of all places.” He gestured for Kili to sit down, switching on his hanging electric lantern and lifting the lid on his trunk. “With term-time coming up, there were all these pamphlets about the place. Say, Kili, have you considered school?”

“School? I thought you had another tin of biscuits.” Kili frowned, folding his arms. “I finished school _years_ ago. Horrid stuff.”

“Oh, not like going to your old comprehensive.” Bilbo assured him, scooping the wrapped package in his arm and sitting beside Kili on the canvas stretcher. “No, I was reading about the Olvath Technical Institute,” he eased off the string, and the paper crackled, “and I took the liberty of getting you a few things.”

_“Elementary Physics?_ ” Kili picked up the stack of books from Bilbo’s lap and rifled through them. “Matriculation Exam papers? _Introduction to Mechanical Engineering? Illingworth’s Guide to Westron Grammar?_ Bilbo, why on earth did you get these?”

“Because,” Bilbo picked up the slim prospectus at the bottom of the bundle. “I saw this.” He opened the correct page and held it to the light.

“Aeronautical engineering?” Kili read the compact paragraph, lips moving silently. His eyes widened at the end. “The Royal _Air Force?_ What– me, an engineer?” He scoffed and set the book down. “You’re ridiculous!”

“Why?” He challenged the dwarf. “You know your way around a motorcar better than anyone I've seen. You’re obviously very bright. Why couldn’t you do it? I know you want to be a pilot, and that might not be possible for you, but they don’t bar dwarves from the Technical Institute.”

“Because, I did _awfully_ at school. I barely passed. Thorin had to hire a special tutor for me, and it was _so_ boring – just hours and hours of dates and sums and figures until I wanted to scream.” He flashed a weak smile. “Really, it’s such a nice thought, but I don’t–”

“You haven’t even looked at the form.” Bilbo cut him off with the stern air of a schoolmaster, and Kili fell silent, chastised. “That’s not you talking right now; it’s Thorin. I see the way he treats you, Kili, like you’re an errant child. But that’s not true. You’re more intelligent than anybody here gives you credit for.”

Kili looked from the books up to Bilbo, chancing a weak smile. “Really?”

“Of course. So you only scraped your matrics. That was _years_ ago. Fili told me you did quite well in physics until seventh form. I asked about mature admission, and it’s really a simple process. You sit an entrance exam and if your results are good enough, the dean will sit you down for an interview, just to make sure you’re of sound character. And you’re an MP’s nephew! Doesn’t get more sound than that in a place like Olvath, does it?” Kili bit his lip as he listened, drumming his fingers against the physics textbook. “Kili, I know what it’s like to have your dreams taken away from you.” Bilbo softened, and he rested his hand on Kili’s knee for just a moment before letting go. “I felt like my world had ended when I left Rivendell. It seemed so unfair and cruel to lose everything so swiftly. I– I couldn’t handle it.” He sighed. “And, you know, it took me years – _decades_ – to truly come to terms with the fact that my life wasn’t going to go the way I had planned. And when you all came along, I realised this was my chance. I could _be_ someone again, and prove wrong everybody who had ever doubted me.” Kili’s hands had fallen still. “Don’t be a fool like me and wait twenty years to take another chance.”

Kili lifted the books and studied them all in turn. “I never considered anything like this…” He picked up the application form and scanned it with a gasp. “Bilbo – the examination is in three weeks!”

“If Thorin and I can go to a party, you can go to sit an exam.” Bilbo asserted. “And I’m sure Ori will help you with the basics, if you ask nicely. I’ll swot you up on your Westron and make sure you have a good novel or two under your belt for the essay question. It won’t be easy, but it’s not impossible for you.” But there was a frightened look in Kili’s dark eyes, and dropped the form as though it burned to the touch. “Look, you don’t have to make any decisions tonight or even tomorrow. Just have a good think about it, OK?”

Kili frowned down at the books again. “What about Thorin?” He said without lifting his head.

Bilbo scoffed. “What about him? You don’t need his permission, Kili. You’re a legal adult. You do what you want to do.”

“Yeah.” And a tentative thread of courage crept into his voice underneath all the dismissiveness and self-depreciation. “Yeah, I– I am.”

* * *

 

Bilbo lay awake. Eyes closed, listened to the tinny tick-tick-tick of his travel clock counting away the seconds. His bones ached with tiredness, but Bilbo didn't dare fall asleep. By his sleepy counting, midnight should have passed already, and he couldn't bring himself to open his eyes. Disappointment sank in his little body, heavy as an iron weight, and a hot, salty seal brimming between closed lashes. Stupid. Why did he let himself hope for one moment that Thorin would ever come to him? How could he be so foolish, so naive? He _knew_ Thorin. He knew how difficult it was for that stubborn old git to ever regard his true feelings and abandon that misguided sense of dignity. He never should have expected–

“Bilbo?” The world fell away as Bilbo sat bolt upright in bed, that nasty voice snuffed out. He scrabbled for his travel clock and held it close to his face, squinting in the gloom. The minute hand was a hair's breadth from midnight. He'd miscounted. “Bilbo, are you still awake?”

His hair was on end. Bilbo tried to smooth it down, sweat already slicking his palms while his heart thudded in his throat. “Yes,” he croaked weakly, not sure at first if Thorin could even hear it. But there was a scratching at his tent that didn't come from the flap of the wind, and through the dense weave of canvas, he saw the bulky figure of a dwarf on his knees. Then, finally, it was open, and Bilbo sat frozen, feeling detached from his body, watching Thorin fasten the tent shut behind him, locking the outside world away.

With the clumsy staggering of an colt on newborn legs, Bilbo threw himself out of bed and crawled across the groundsheet towards the hunched black outline that haunted his very being. Despite the darkness, everything in Bilbo’s heart was sunshine, a brightness that burned. He stretched out and touched Thorin in this dreamlike state and yes – it was real cloth beneath his fingertips, real skin, a real pulse that throbbed and raced beneath it. Thorin was stiff and uncertain against Bilbo’s touch, hands balled in his lap, breathing rough and shallow as his shoulders heaved in the dark.

Their mouths met with an agonising ecstasy, bittersweet on Bilbo’s tongue after enduring this long wait. The brimming sun-heat in his heart spilled over and flooded over, filling him up, draining through his veins. He gripped the front of Thorin’s shirt and pulled them close, fusing their bodies together. The kiss was firm and desperate. But still, Thorin was hard against him and refused to yield. He seemed only to endure it. Bilbo beat his fists against the hard stone of his exterior, bruising and breaking his hands without leaving behind even a crack. But he wouldn’t give in. His hands found the outlines of Thorin’s face and neck in the darkness and touching him softly, with the reverence of a long-lost treasure, an antique brought out from centuries of slumber in the dust, feeling for the dips and cracks and marks in his skin. Bilbo deepened the kiss; not desperate this time but heated in his passion, and Thorin finally opened his mouth to him. Bilbo closed his eyes and tasted _Thorin,_ surrendering himself to the base instinct in his stomach and pulling lower, intoxicated with the closeness of the one he so loved bitterly, so violently.

Bilbo’s fingertips skimmed his neck and found the little hollow in juncture of his throat, just below the left side of his jaw. A pulse throbbed against his touch, and on a wild impulse, Bilbo pressed his mouth against it. He relearned, after his soul’s long hibernation, how to find those sensitive knots hidden deep in the body and and bring them into the light. A groan thrummed against his lips, and then Thorin crumbled, entirely, magnificently, the great ruin of his unrelenting body brought down. He melted in Bilbo’s arms, soft as half-forged gold, his skin flushed and scorching. There was no worship, no careful reverence now. With the artless lust of a beast, Bilbo broke him down mercilessly, crushed him and tore him into pieces and stole the air from his lungs with his savage, passionate kisses, seizing handfuls of cloth and hair and flesh, touching, pulling, stroking, until Thorin was shaking and incomprehensible, completely undone. Thorin gave himself over to mindless desire, allowed himself to be shaped in Bilbo's hands, mimicking the curl of his fingers, the press of his mouth, working by touch and smell in the dark, the both of them struggling to be quiet.

Afterwards, there was the thoughtful, fragile silence that always followed the loss of someone's virginity. They held each other in the darkness, sticky from twin release, still quivering as the molten lust in their bodies cooled and faded. Bilbo knew he had won. He had claimed him. Thorin lay on his side and Bilbo curled around him, pillowing his cheek on a nest of dishevelled curls, his nose just touching Thorin’s earlobe. He seemed distant from Bilbo, retreating deep inside himself and drawing those old barriers up, putting himself beyond Bilbo’s reach. Neither of them spoke. Bilbo closed his eyes and breathed slowly, willing his heart to calm down.

“I have to go soon.” The dwarf whispered, the deepness in his voice humming behind it.

“Not yet.” Bilbo felt at that moment as though his soul existed out of his body. It seemed so clumsy and dull and unfeeling, blunt as a hammer, while the love that pierced his chest and seared his brain was sharp as a razor, white-hot. Already, the thrill of his victory was slipping away, the terror of losing Thorin poisoning him. “Stay, please. Just for a little while longer.” One arm stretched out and closed across Thorin’s chest, hooking him in. And Thorin let him, keeping his own hands at his side. Soon. How long was soon? Bilbo clung desperately to him, willing Thorin to stay. His ragged breathing had evened out, slow and soft. Thorin seemed bent towards grief, mourning the innocence that Bilbo had just taken, and his heart hardened against Bilbo as a result. They'd made love together, and it was more brutal and passionate than Bilbo had ever dared to imagine. Too much - it was too much for Thorin to take all at once, and Bilbo knew it. He could feel Thorin wresting with the enormity of their savage lust, his body curled beside Bilbo's with the perfect fit of a puzzle piece, cool and stiff as stone to the touch.

But he wouldn't give up. There was nothing he could do or say to soothe him, not yet. All he could do was be here. He knew the confusion that would be fogging Thorin's brain at the moment, the alien sense of sexual ecstasy and the horror that it was so forbidden. He'd felt it too, at Upton grammar when he was a boy, hugging Harald Pennyfeather close in the darkness of the caretaker's closet beneath the stairs, tasting salt, smelling the sour dampness of adolescent sweat, stinging and frozen all at once, realising that he had lost a part of himself that he was never going to get back. Harald had tried to kiss him and stroke his hair and talk, and in shattering that goose-egg of silence, Bilbo struck out at him, flushed in his anger, jarred and raw from overfeeling.

So now, Bilbo held Thorin, drowsy, feeling the heaviness of the dwarf-body pressed against his own soft flesh, and he said nothing. The tick-tick-tick of his travel clock filled his ears as Bilbo waited silently for Thorin to leave him or fall asleep, whatever came first.


	13. Chapter 13

Thorin had left before Bilbo woke. For a heart-stopping moment, Bilbo wondered, wrangled with sleep, that the whole thing had been a delicious, terrible dream. He pressed his face into the thin pillow and breathed in deeply. He was there, lingering, the smell of aftershave and cedar beard-oil trapped in the woven fibres. Bilbo breathed in again, clutching handfuls of thin cotton, stretching his limbs out. It was still warm there. He slid into the empty space, keeping his eyes shut as he absorbed the remnants of Thorin, remembering, the liquid heat pooling in his body, sinking down, down, down.

He thought he’d reached the limits of his ecstasy, but an hour into their dig, Bofur came running to him, the yellow of his torch bobbing up and down in the dark, waving a grubby handful of leather back and forth. A book. 

There wasn’t time to wait. Bilbo took the book from him and wrapped it up, begging that next time, _please_ don’t shake it all about. But it seemed his worries about preserving the spine were unfounded; as Bilbo laid it out on the bench in his shared tent with Thorin, turning on the electric light, he saw the stitching was as sturdy as ever. Thick cords bound a hundred or so pages of vellum a little wider and longer than Bilbo’s splayed hand. Donning gloves, he rested the book on a cushion stolen from the mess tent with half the stuffing pulled out to save the spine. It was a religious text. Part of Bilbo felt a little deflated as he realised this. It wasn’t his special interest; he preferred epics and sagas and romantic poetry. But Khuzdul was Khuzdul, and from the first page, Bilbo could tell it was special. 

Thorin came just before dinner, expecting a report. “Bofur told me he’d found a book.” Bilbo jumped at his rich voice, an inkblot spreading on his page of notes. “Have you figured out what it is?”

“Thorin.” Bilbo smiled. “Last night, it was–”

“The book.” Thorin repeated, a thin edge hardening. “What is it? History? Religion?”

Bilbo swallowed down his disappointment. Was Thorin really going to keep playing this game? Were they to forget about each other during the day? But he looked into those brilliantly blue eyes and saw only resolve. No, he really only cared about the book. Everything else, even Bilbo, was irrelevant. “U-Uh, religion, unfortunately.” he finally choked out. “A commentary of the Dvergatal by some dwarf named Hár. It’s actually quite fascinating. He’s a Mahalist, a proper stone-dweller, claims to be a Longbeard. No date, sadly, but it’s certainly mid-Third Age. I think it was initially written some time before this copy was transcribed. He briefly talks about Nain II as though he was still alive.”

“Are there any other names?” Thorin pounced. “Other kings or people?”

Bilbo shook his head. “I wish. It seems he was firmly locked in his underground cell for most of his life. He claims he went a century without seeing the sun. Can you imagine? How sad. It’s all frightfully dwarvish – spirituality, customs, philosophy, you know.”  

“You’ve got notes.” Thorin picked up the pieces of paper Bilbo had been writing on, scanning his even rows of spidery handwriting. “Can you condense this, make a copy for me?”

“Oh, I’ll certainly write an archive-style catalogue.” Bilbo assured him. “I could spend days poring through this, but I don’t think there’s much more I can get out of it for now. Scholars of Third-Age religion will go mad for this sort of thing, though.” Thorin’s lip twitched in a half-chuckle. “Thorin,” taking a chance, Bilbo reached out and took his wrist. Thorin tensed. “Last night…”

Thorin’s eyes slid from the page to him, his jaw tense, refusing to give anything away. “It was perfect.” Bilbo whispered. “Will you come back again? Tonight?”

Thorin drew in a rapid breath as he considered the question, the paper trembling slightly in his outstretched hand. Bilbo closed his thin fingers around his wrist, feeling the pulse throb against the pad of his thumb, fractured and erratic. “Yes,” he finally croaked, his voice on the very edge of a whisper. “Tonight.” All Bilbo wanted to do in that moment was leap into his arms and take him, there and then, not giving a fig for whoever happened to walk by.

* * *

 

“We have to be careful.” Thorin lay on his back, the pale shapeless of his face gleaming on the edge of Bilbo’s vision. Bilbo rested his head on the broad, muscular shoulder, weaving his fingers through the dense nest of hair on Thorin’s chest. It still heaved up and down in terror and passion, and as Thorin laid a hand on Bilbo’s arm, holding him close, his palm was damp and cold to the touch. “Bilbo, if anyone _ever_ found out...”

“I know.” Oh, he knew all right. No one had a sharper understanding of how deep the consequences ran. Bilbo knew he was a fool for doing this at all, endangering his own credibility, the expedition, Thorin’s entire career, for the sake of this little affair. They were both fools. “I’m used to being careful.”

“We need rules.” Thorin shuffled in the stretcher, lying on his side so their eyes met, twin stars piercing through the gloom. “No physical contact outside of this tent, ever. No asides or innuendo or secret glances. For goodness sake, Bilbo, don’t try to be _cute_.”

“I’m not a schoolgirl.” Bilbo hissed back. “I’m _used_ to this, all right? Sneaking around, pretending there’s nothing else going on in front of others. What, do you think in the past I’ve just paraded around with my hand down another man’s trousers? I have tact. I’ve done all of this before.”

“And you’ve never been caught?” His age made Bilbo forget how inexperienced he was with things like this. Thorin leaned in, strands of raven-black brushing against Bilbo’s ear. He shivered at the touch, his tongue swelling under the weight of the question. 

“Never.” He finally lied, one hand on the back of Thorin’s neck. “I promise, Thorin, with everything I have. I’ll keep this quiet.” Bilbo wanted so hard to believe it. He loved Thorin, dearly, with a tender love most reserved only for one person in their life. This, he knew, was the last person, the _only_ person, he could ever love again. And to be the ruin of Thorin, to destroy everything he had built, would be a blow that neither of them could ever recover from. These things had a way of coming out, they always did, but Bilbo couldn’t stop. He’d already fallen so far for Thorin, stripping away his own numbed outer exterior for him, that life he’d forced himself to live for so long. Being open and naked and new before him, both in soul and body, it brought an ecstasy that hooked him in like a drug. All Bilbo could do was tie himself down, brace himself and Thorin too for the incoming storm. His grip tightened, eyes closed as Thorin drifted down, sealing their impossible promise with a kiss.

* * *

 

“Are you all right?” Kili asked at breakfast, looking up from the Pelican that Bilbo had given him. The cover was already creased and smudged with dirt, a corner missing. “You look awfully red. Hope you’re not sick.”

“No, no.” Bilbo cleared his throat. “Too many blankets, perhaps. Just feeling a little flushed.”

“Ooh, I’ll take ‘em. Dori keeps pinching my spare, and in the morning he swears blue it wasn’t him, even if it’s still draped over his old belly.” Nori remarked, coming back to the table with a steaming cup of tea. “Still reading, Kili? What is it?”

“Oh,” Kili lifted his cover. “ _The Bell-Ringer_. It’s about a dam who runs away from her stuffy old family to try and be an actress, but it all goes horribly wrong. Bloody cracking book. Bilbo lent it to me.”

“Ooh, I remember that from school.” The white of Bofur’s teeth flashed. “They banned it, of course, but there were always a few copies circling around. Used to read the blue bits in bed with the covers all pulled up. Didn’t have magazines in those days.” 

“Hmph, that filth.” Oin sniffed, looking up from his very-creased newspaper. 

“It’s the only actual dwarvish work to win the Orodrim.” Bilbo pointed out. “It’s the most important thing your people wrote this century.”

“Ah, I remember when it first came out.” Dwalin sighed, setting down his empty bowl of porridge. “Didn’t sell at first; no one knew about it and it was a tiny publishing house. Then when the Literature Review Board put in a censorship case, they all went spare. Booksellers burned hundreds and the rest were snatched up in days. My first-ever shift down at Metro Yard, I had to break up a fight between two old biddies fighting over the last copy at a newsstand. Walking sticks and false teeth were flying.” The tent erupted in warm laughter at that. 

Fili grinned. “Mm, Thorin’s got one of those first editions. Worth a mint. Only a few dozen copies left, and they’re all owned by collectors and historical libraries. He keeps it in his safety deposit box all wrapped in tissue.”

“ _Thorin’s_ read this?” Kili blurted out. “Mahal, how? This seems like everything he hates.”

Bilbo shrugged. “It’s about the struggle. Why wouldn’t Thorin like it?”

“Why wouldn’t I like what?” Thorin boomed from the doorway. Bilbo jumped at his voice and busied himself in his porridge, wondering if anyone else noticed his flaming ears. He held his breath as the dwarf walked past, and for a moment he could swear he heard Thorin whisper something. Or perhaps it was just a gust of outside wind.

“ _The Bell-Ringer_.” Fili shuffled over on the bench, offering Thorin a seat. “Kili’s reading it.” Thorin froze, halfway sitting down, staring across the table with a strange look on his face. Bilbo studied him, his wide eyes and the way his lower lip pursed, the whorls of hair on his neck pushing against the olive-green collar of his shirt in a heavy swallow.

“Oh.” As quick as it seemed to come, Thorin’s shock vanished, and he reached out for the near-empty kettle of tea. “I thought you only read horrid science fiction, Kili. If you wanted to read it, I could have found you a copy.” 

“Not the hardback, I hope.” FIli remarked. “I thought that was supposed to pay for my wedding. Or Kili’s if he got there first, perish the thought.” 

“You know I’ve got a little nest egg for the both of you. Bombur, is there any breakfast left?” The question struck them all by surprise. Normally Thorin took his own breakfast into his tent, if he had any at all, taking only a very quick cup of tea at the end of the table, head down with Balin over pieces of paper. 

“Er, should be. Let me check.” Bombur blinked, shrugging at his brother as he heaved to his feet.

* * *

 

The drop became a trickle and the trickle a flood. Within five days, Bilbo was relegated solely to his desk, with no less than thirty-six manuscripts and scrolls in various states of wear wrapped in tissue and waiting in a wooden crate. Part of him missed the tunnels winding through the rock, the beautiful carvings and old houses, the wide avenues that stood waiting, the remains of market stalls and aquifers and public squares, some scorched and broken, others still so perfectly preserved that they could even see the fossilised remains of food in silvered bowls. But he certainly didn’t miss the heart-stopping crawl through tunnels too low to stand in, the moments when his torchlight flickered, or when he thought he’d taken a wrong turn and couldn’t find his chalk markings right away. 

No, he was much more suited to this. Bilbo read and wrote voraciously, until his head hurt and his hand cramped. He made so many pages of notes that he had to ask Thorin for more paper, writing short descriptions on index cards and keeping them in a wooden box. Every evening before dinner, Thorin came and read through Bilbo’s notes, asking for clarification for anything he didn’t know. He lost interest quickly sometimes, but others he hounded Bilbo on a particular point, demanding an ad verbatim translation of a paragraph or sentence. One night, Bilbo finally snapped and lost his temper, snatching the papers out from Thorin’s nose.

“Stop being a pillock and tell me what it is you’re looking for, then!” Bilbo slammed the papers down will a huff and threw his pen on the top. “And don’t look at me like a fish, Thorin; I know you’re trying to sniff something out.”

“You’re too nosey for your own good.” Thorin sighed, pulling his own stool out and taking a seat upon it. “Although I suppose you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.” A strand of hair fell over his face. Bilbo longed to brush it back. He loved dearly to run his fingers through Thorin’s hair while curled into his side, winding the curls round and round his hands, feeling the soft shift against his skin. Tonight, he vowed in his head. “I know some of the others are getting edgy. What is it we’re looking for, after all? Isn’t the gold enough? Balin thinks I should have been honest from the start, but…” Thorin picked up Bilbo’s pen, mainly so he’d have something to toy with, Bilbo suspected. “This doesn’t leave us. Not yet.”

“Of course.” For just a moment, Bilbo rested his hand on Thorin’s leg. “You can trust me. Surely it can’t be worse than any other secrets we’re keeping.”

“Not here.” His voice was stern and sharp, and with a wince, Bilbo pulled away. “For goodness sake, Bilbo, I told you to be careful.” Contrite, Bilbo lowered his eyes and wrung his hands in his lap, mumbling a half-hearted apology.

“I’m looking for Thranduil.” Thorin finally murmured, so quiet that Bilbo almost didn’t catch him. He lifted his head with a frown, head cocked to one side. “Or, at least, evidence of him. He’s been king since the dawn of the Third Age and he never saw Erebor? Never traded with her? Never sent an ambassador?” He shook his head. “He’s lying. He rewrote the history books and wiped our past clean. He changed every mention of Erebor in his own records to make it seem like tribe of savages throwing rocks at each other and claims our legends are mere fantasy.”

Bilbo held his breath as the enormity of what Thorin suggested slowly wound through his brain. “That’s a very serious charge.” He said gently, uncertainly, his hands still in his lap. “Thorin, you would need watertight evidence against him. You’re talking about Thranduil lying to the whole country, the _world,_ and for what? To keep dwarves subservient and trapped in poverty?”

“That was his initial reasoning, yes. And when dwarves first settled in Mirkwood again and fell under his domain, he kept it secret and discouraged any talks of Erebor’s wealth. And as our belief in magic faded, Thranduil claimed the ancient dragon was in fact a volcanic eruption. It worked out so perfectly for him.” Thorin didn’t look at all fazed despite the ridiculousness of what he suggested. “If we dwarves knew about the wealth hidden beneath that mountain, we would have claimed it for ourselves, and what right would Thranduil have to dispute that? I know he’s greedy, but he’s not stupid. There’s no way he could have taken it for himself and left everyone in the dark, and it’s a secret too big to let even a single other person in on. Tauriel knows, I’m sure, but outside of those two, it’s a complete mystery.” Thorin’s left hand curled in a fist as he studied the disbelief on Bilbo’s face. “What else do you think happened? You’ve seen that gold. Do you honestly think Thranduil had no idea about it?”

No. The idea that it wasn’t just a forgotten legend but a long-standing conspiracy seemed insane. Bilbo opened his mouth to tell Thorin he thought as much when the memory of the week before struck him. Thranduil had sought him out, followed him, hauled him into that ostentatious limousine of his and questioned him, and on what information? Bilbo was a former Khuzdul scholar who attended a function with Thorin, nothing more, and Thranduil had seen fit to essentially kidnap him over it. Something about Bilbo had definitely spooked him. And what if he (and Thorin) weren’t the first to do this?

“You don’t have to put your name to anything,” Thorin continued. “Just give me the information, and I’ll deal with it. Just – if you see a mention of elves from the Greenwood or of Thranduil himself, pass it along to me. Any information you see at all.” He leaned forward in his stool, reached out and took Bilbo by the wrist. “Please.”

His heart beat in his throat at the sensation. The tip of Thorin’s little finger caught the hem of his sleeve, pressing against the jutting bone where his hand met his arm, the touch searing hot against Bilbo’s skin. “Of course,” Bilbo finally croaked out, lost in Thorin, in the little fraying edges that he could grab onto. “I’ll do anything.” 

* * *

 

They walked into the mess tent together, thinking it would still be empty. But there was a surprise at the end of the long table, head bent over an exercise book and a thick text with a pen in his hand. Kili. Thorin stopped and stared, frowning, and Bilbo shoved his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders, wondering if it was at all possible to quietly slink away.

“Thorin.” Kili lifted his head at the approaching footsteps. “You’re, um, back earlier than I thought.”

“I was discussing the manuscript findings with Mr Baggins.” He said, cool and even. “What are you doing? Are you taking notes?” Kili’s eyes slid from Thorin to Bilbo over his shoulder, lost, wide with fright. 

“I, uh, yeah.” Kili put down his pencil and cleared his throat. 

“What is it for?” Thorin approached the table and picked up the textbook, turning it over to see the cover. “ _Elementary Physics_?” He saw the short stack of books at Kili’s elbow. “What is it you’re playing at?”

“N-Nothing.” Kili bit his lip. “Look, I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been working up to it, but I just get, well, nervous.” Thorin set the book down and listened, towering over his nephew with arms folded. “I’m going back to school.”

Thorin scoffed. “School? You?”

“Yes, me.” Kili hardened at Thorin’s incredulity, the nervousness giving way to that old tension between them. “Look,” he rifled through the books, pulling out the prospectus Bilbo had given him. “The Olvath Technical College do engineering degrees. There’s these adult entrance exams that you sit, and I’ve been going through all the books to study for it. It’s mostly physics and maths, and you know I’m good at that stuff when I concentrate. You keep telling me to go and get a job, well, this is the first step. I don’t want to push a broom or break rocks or drive a bus, Thorin. I want to _do_ something, with planes, and if I can’t fly them, then building and repairing them’s almost just as good. Look at my Mearas. After I got tapped on the M5, I basically rebuilt her with my own two hands, and she runs better than ever. I’m good at this sort of stuff. I know it’s not law or the armed service or any of that, but it’s what I want to do. Please, can you just… let me do this?”

For a while, Thorin didn’t say anything. He read the prospectus intently, his lips pursed. Finishing with a sigh, he lowered the pamphlet and let it drop on the tabletop. “Who put you up to it?” He finally asked, his voice tense and quiet, but thoughtful too. 

Kili opened his mouth and made silent, shapeless words, uncertain. “I did.” Bilbo finally stepped forward. Thorin whirled around to look at him, his confusion furrowing into a full-on frown. “I bought Kili the books while I was in Olvath with you. I saw the prospectus at a tea shop and thought it would be good for him.” 

Bilbo’s admission took Thorin aback. He stared, lips twitching with a thousand things he longed to say. “He’s not stupid.” Bilbo went on, filling the dead air between them more than anything else. “In fact, I think he’s downright bright when it comes to this.”

“Kili,” Thorin turned back to him, his shoulders slowly moving up and down as he restrained his breathing, “did you think I’d really stop you from doing this?”

“W-Well, I don’t know.” Kili pushed his books away. “You always hate _everything_ I do. How am I supposed to know what makes you happy anymore? You just… you always want things done your way, even if I hate it. It’s not fair. I can’t be like you or Fili, all right? I just wish that you’d accept that.”

At first, Thorin didn’t speak. He sat down slowly at the table opposite Kili, taking one of the cloth-bound textbook, running his fingertips over the gilt lettering on the front cover. He was unfocused and distant, untouchable to them both. Bilbo hovered anxiously in the doorway, unsure if he should stay or go. Kili seemed trapped in the same uncertainty, biting on his lip as he stared at his uncle, hands on his lap underneath the table.

Finally, Thorin lifted his head. “I don’t think you can’t do this, or you shouldn’t.”

“Then why are you so angry?” Kili leaned forward.

“Because you never asked me. You – and _you_ –” Thorin looked over his shoulder for a moment, “went behind my back on this. You shut me out.”

“Because I knew you’d do this!” Kili swept his books up and rose from the chair. “I knew you’d get all moody and be horrible about it. You’re such a hypocrite, Uncle. You make it so hard to trust you with anything.” 

“Kili,” But Kili was marching out of the tent, scowling, keeping his chin high and defiant. Bilbo started, catching him by the elbow before he could leave. “Kili, don’t.”

“Let me go.”

“No.” Bilbo latched on. “Please don’t shout at him and then leave. Then he really won’t let you do anything.”

“Oh, hang him! I don’t need him; I’m old enough to do what I want.” Kili pulled free with a huff, but his bravado deflated somewhat when he laid eyes on Thorin. The dwarf sat hunched in his seat, staring at the tabletop, not looking at either of them. 

“I’m sorry.” Kili physically took a step back at the deep voice, hugging the books close to his chest. With a long sigh, Thorin turned around on the bench, hands clasped in his lap. “I think engineering is an admirable calling. And I’ve seen you fiddle with gears and motors ever since you figured out how to pull the back off the wireless as a dwarrow. I know it’s something you would excel at if you focused.”

Kili bristled. “Then why don’t you ever encourage me?”

“Because I thought…” He shook his head. “I saw more of your mother than I liked. And I think part of that terrified me. She was terrific. Nothing, nobody could ever tell her what to do. Her strength was inspirational, but she– she just didn’t listen. Nobody could make her listen. And I see you on the same path and it frightens me. It frightens your brother too. We don’t want to lose you.” 

Bilbo swallowed hard. Kili tightened his grip on the study books, breathing hard through his nose. “You’ll lose me if you don’t let me do this. I’ve been this close for months, Thorin. I told myself, you know, if there was any money in that mountain, I was going to take my share and leave. I’ll go mad– Mahal, I’m going mad already.” Thorin locked eyes with him, listening intently, quietly. “There’s a line in that book, _The Bell-Ringer_ , that I can’t get out of my head. About how the weight of her family’s expectation is a burden, and it’s crushing her and crushing her, and she doesn’t have the strength to throw it off anymore. I’m being crushed.” 

Thorin seemed physically pained. He hid his face in his hands for a moment, struggling with some deep, deep fracture in his heart. Bilbo ached to look at him in this quiet moment of suffering. Kili’s mouth trembled but he remained solid in his defiance, clutching the books as though they could shield him. He still expected a blow, and when Thorin stood up, Kili flinched back from him, faltering. Bilbo held his breath. Slowly, almost staggering, Thorin took one step towards his nephew, and another, engulfing him in a rough hug. Kili stood firm, unyielding to him, and Thorin bent his head to mumble something. Bilbo couldn’t catch it. 

“I, uh, should go.” Bilbo murmured, hands deep in his pockets. He didn’t hang around for a response. The dust flew from the soles of his leathery feet in an effort to escape. Bilbo stepped into the mountain air, breathing in. Evening was starting to creep in, and he saw Nori already approaching, in talks with his brother, who was waving at Bilbo and looking excited.

“Another one?” He wasn’t sure what to think. Bilbo jogged to catch them, hoping to keep the pair out of the mess tent for as long as possible.

“Four!” Ori beamed. “And _so_ much other stuff too. The others are still down there scribbling it all down. And I found the most _amazing_ formation of rose quartz down in this cave – taller than an orc from Mordor and wider than Bombur! I took a dozen photographs, but I don’t know how they’ll come out. FIli’s talking about maybe setting up a dark room somewhere in the mountain, Eru knows it’s black enough some parts…” He kept on nattering excitedly as Bilbo led them into the tent he shared with Thorin, the hobbit doing his best to prolong the delicate task of unwrapping the books from the haphazard mess of shirts and string to spare them from the dust, begging Nori and Ori for help, until twilight had truly claimed the greying sky.

* * *

 

Bilbo kept his electric lantern on, reading _By The Sea_ in the tiny pool of yellow light while the camp slept. He was too jittery and nervous to read more than a few lines at a time before casting an eye over his travel clock. Time passed slowly, minute by minute, until he finally gave up and set the book aside, lying on his back with his fingers woven together, resting loosely over his stomach, staring up at the canvas ceiling of his tent. 

It was impossible to know what Thorin thought of him now. He seemed a little warmer than usual at dinner, smiling occasionally as the rest of the table erupted in laughter at some rude joke, but he left just as he usually did, not looking at Bilbo before he retreated to his own private tent. Bilbo had been caught by Fili before he could follow him and dragged into a game of whist that became so enjoyable that Bilbo forgot about Thorin entirely. Kili was certainly in brighter spirits and seemed confident enough to tell Fili, Bilbo and Nori over their cards all about the course. Thorin would let him sit the exam, and promised to give an excellent endorsement to the dean. There was even talk of allowing Kili to stay in a small flat by himself in the city if he behaved for the remainder of the excavation. He fizzed and squirmed in his chair, unable to hide his smile, and the joy was infectious. 

But although Bilbo may have indirectly dismantled some of the long-standing tension between Kili and Thorin, he had been dishonest. Thorin had made it very clear from the outset how highly he valued trust, particularly with those he confided in, and Bilbo knew that he would see the secret encouragement towards Kili as a violation of that trust. When he finally left the mess tent, Thorin’s lamp was out and there was no indication of movement inside. Bilbo went to bed anxious, waiting with his toes curled and every muscle tensed, listening for the tiniest possible sound after the rest of the dwarves retired to their makeshift beds. 

Finally, at half-past eleven, Bilbo heard the familiar rustle of canvas at the mouth of his tent. He sat bolt upright in bed, self-consciously smoothing down his tousled hair and fixing the collar of his nightshirt. Thorin entered silently, a dark, heavy shape that Bilbo couldn’t make out at first, his face masked in shadow. 

“Thorin,” he whispered, pushing the sleeping bag aside, inviting him in. “I didn’t know if you were going to come.”

“Of course.” Thorin was low and gruff. He crouched on his knees beside the stretcher, a dark grey overcoat thrown over his striped pyjamas. There was no suggestion that he intended to remove them. “I wouldn’t leave you fretting all night. You need to be alert and focused on your work tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” Bilbo blurted out, panic leaping in his chest. “About Kili. I should have told you. I just– I got excited, I suppose, and in the rush of it, I thought that you might discourage him, and that would have been so sad.”

Thorin stared beneath the deep shelf of his frown. “So you think the worst of me too, then.”

“No,” Bilbo clutched at the bedclothes. “Thorin, no. I think you’re wonderful. I… can tell that you and Kili have issues, disagreements about this. I mean, that’s normal for any family. My father… Well, let’s just say we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a few things ourselves. I think you can imagine what. I shouldn’t have involved myself. I’m very, very sorry. Please– try not to bear a grudge over this. I don’t think I could stand it if things were spoiled between us again.”

At first, Thorin didn’t speak. He gripped the edge of the stretcher and slowly pulled himself into it with a groan, sitting on the low bed with his knees drawn up almost to his chest. He stared at the ground, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. Bilbo wrung his hands and waited, heart pounding, as Thoring considered his plea with that careful precision he was so renowned for. The silence stretched on, and Bilbo withered away.

“I am a hypocrite.” Thorin finally spoke, a croak of disuse on the edge of his voice. “Kili was right. We talked for a long time after you left, and… he made me reconsider many, many things about both of our lives. I set a standard for myself, for him, and I’ve failed it. After all, how can I begrudge his flouting of the law when I spend my nights illegally with you?” Bilbo’s heart leaped into his throat. 

“That doesn’t mean we have to stop, Thorin.” He whispered, his right hand hovering inches from Thorin’s shoulder, trembling. “I-I mean, it’s not a far law anyway, a-and everyone knows it. I–”

“I didn’t say we should stop. I wasn’t going to.” Thorin turned to him, fixing that piercing blue gaze full on Bilbo’s face. “Bilbo, I don’t think I can ever stop now.” Bilbo’s hand fell limp at his side. “It’s not just you. There’s so many things we’ve done wrong, both me and my family. I thought that if I ignored the bad, pushed it down and tried to make Kili be good…” He shrugged. “In trying to prevent Kili from turning into his mother, I repeated my father’s mistakes. I almost drove him down that same path. Cruel irony, isn’t it?”

“But you didn’t.” Bilbo begged. “You can turn away from that now. Kili told us that you’re going to let him apply for the course. That’s the first step to breaking those shackles, isn’t it?”

“It runs so deep, you can’t... you’ll never understand.” Thorin held his gaze. “This isn’t like the books you’ve read, Bilbo. You don’t find poems written about this.”

“The world’s changed. It’s not the same place your father lived in, or your sister. Even in the last, ten, twenty years, we’ve done and seen so much. It’s a shift our history’s never seen before. You don’t need to keep holding onto the past.”

Thorin shook his head. “It’s not as easy as that. How are we supposed to let go of the past when every day, injustice stares us in the face? Kili is angry at the world, just like his mother was angry. Like I’m angry. I never should have pushed him into the army. I see that now. It broke something between us, especially after…” He swallowed hard, clearly finding it hard to speak. “What I’m going to tell you never leaves this tent, Bilbo. Do you understand? If it got out, I couldn’t bear it.” 

Bilbo reached out and took his shoulder, leaning in close and shuffling together so their hips touched. “Your secrets are mine. I promise, Thorin. I won’t tell a soul.”

“It’s about my brother. I presume you know by now he died in the Forodwaith Wars.” Bilbo nodded. “Nobody asks how or why. They just assumed that he was hit by a shell or bayonetted or gassed like the million others who lost their lives.” Thorin drew in a sharp breath, eyes cloudy with the memory. “But he wasn’t. He never fired his rifle, not once. It was only the second year. We were diggers, like all the other dwarves, building trenches and tunnels all through the ground. They split us up after six months. It became a matter of course to have families in different battalions. We died all died in batches. I ended up fighting three years in, when the numbers grew too thin and they needed as many real guns as they could get, and I’ll be honest, Bilbo, it was a relief to get out of it. With a rifle in your hand, you think you can defend yourself, but we were powerless in those trenches. We’d spend days and days underground, digging in shifts with the bombs going off above us, so close the dirt would fall down around us in clumps and we were too terrified to sleep.” Bilbo looked down and saw that Thorin’s hands were shaking. 

Thorin paused, swallowing hard as his lungs wrestled with the air. It was a moment before he could continue. “They were digging down some tunnel to try get beneath the enemy lines and lay some dynamite. Been there for days, his friend Hafr said, barely sleeping in all that time. The ground above them was shelled, and the walls collapsed. Ten were killed, most slowly; the others were trapped underground, helplessly listening to their comrades die.”

Bilbo found his heart was thumping heavily in his chest, racing, the blood flowing too hard in his arms and legs, his fingertips very hot. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, but Thorin half-heartedly lifted one hand. The story wasn’t over.

“It was four days before they were dug out. Hafr and Frerin and one other survived; the rest bled out overtime. Frerin was a wreck afterwards. But they checked him over and said there was nothing wrong with him, not physically, and they– they ordered him back on the front line in a week. He wouldn’t go. He threw his shovel on the ground and refused orders. They said he was like madman, screaming and sobbing, and they had to restrain him. He signed his own death warrant. Cowardice, they wrote on the file. They gave him the firing squad.” Thorin couldn’t look at him. He kept his eyes on his hands, the knots of his hairy knuckles twisting and turning in the pale electric light. “I was only ten miles away. They passed a note to my superior officer, and he let me go. Even let me take his horse. I got to spend the night with him. It was the longest and shortest night of my life. And then in the dawn... I couldn’t watch. I tried to block my ears, but I still heard the gunshots.”

“Oh Eru.” Bilbo gasped, stricken. “Thorin, I’m so sorry. I-I...”

“He wasn’t a coward. He was traumatised. I knew it, Hafr knew it – everybody knew it. But we didn’t have a name for it back then. Shellshock was a theory only a handful of doctors would whisper about. The news gave my father a stroke. I couldn’t do anything, else they’d have court-martialled me for insubordination. Dís wrote furious letters to everyone she could think of to try and clear his name.” Thorin was faded and shrunken, hollowing out from an ancient, slow-healing grief. “I told the boys when Fili first seemed interested about getting into the army. Fili was saddened, but he understood that it was a different time. But Kili, he was angry. He said it was an injustice and that I shouldn’t have let it lie. He never looked at me quite the same again, and I lost a lot of his respect. He’s still angry at the world for taking his mother and uncle away. I can’t blame him for that. He sees me as part of the machine of oppression. Kili things that change will only come by fighting. That’s why he goes to those ridiculous marches and protests. Nobody cares more than him, Bilbo. Nobody has more heart. But he’s going about it the wrong way, just like Dís did.”

“I’m so sorry, Thorin. I can’t imagine how heart-breaking it would be to lose a brother and a sister like that. But you haven’t lost Kili, or Fili.” Bilbo leaned against him, his hold on Thorin tightening. “I know that you’ll do the right thing. There’s still time.”

Thorin drew in a sharp breath, eyes darting for a moment at the hand on his shoulder. “You seem to have an unwavering faith in me despite knowing every one of my shortcomings. Why is that?”

Bilbo managed a wry smile. “I suppose I’m just a fool with rose-tinted glasses. I’ve always insisting on seeing the best in everybody. A friend at university said it was my biggest fault.” The smile faded with a fresh seriousness. “It’s obvious that Kili loves you. Have a little more faith in him. Let him find his own way for a while.” 

“Engineering.” Thorin sighed. “I feel like an idiot. How didn’t _I_ see that? I completely disregarded the idea of any further schooling. And you’re right, Bilbo. He’d be brilliant at it if he stuck it out.” But the hesitation in his voice gave Thorin’s fears away; it was a big if. 

“If you stick by him and support him, then I know he can do it.” Bilbo slowly wound his arm across Thorin’s back, bringing him in for a hug. “You just need to be there for him.” 

Thorin leaned against him, eyes drifting half-closed with a long sigh. “I’m so tired.” He admitted softly. “It’s like everywhere I turn is another battle. Everybody only wants to fight.” He slumped.

“Well, not me. I just want to love you.” Bilbo reached down and seized the collar of Thorin’s open coat, pulling it over one broad shoulder. Thorin stiffened at the touch and made to withdraw, but Bilbo pressed his mouth against the side of his face, softly, reassuringly, the breath a gentle hum in his throat. “Just the coat. I only want to lie with you.”

It was a new, special closeness that they shared, an understanding of a great uncovered truth. Bilbo kissed his face, just once, with tenderness instead of passion, and the furling rush of love in his chest stretched out to take Thorin, to hold him close and soothe away his fears.  Pity crawled through his belly for Thorin, who had suffered so much from forces wildly out of his control, who had lost so much and despite all of that refused to give up and stray from his pursuit for justice. He felt inadequate, sitting with him in this little egg of peace and light. He felt like he had nothing to give. Bilbo didn’t have worldly knowledge or great philosophical understanding to comfort Thorin in his time of crisis, just love. Thorin leaned into him and relaxed in his arms, giving himself over to the hobbit, clinging to him. It drove everything home, sharp as a tack, pinning down Bilbo’s anxious, fragmented thoughts that danced and whirled in his head. Love was all Thorin wanted from him. It was all he needed.

“I love you.” Bilbo whispered it again as he laid down, feeling the coiled strain of Thorin’s arms ripple against his palms. Thorin exhaled sharply, a half-laugh, and Bilbo saw that he was almost smiling. They shuffled together, limbs and flannel sleeves curling around each other under Bilbo’s blanket, Thorin’s coat draped on top for an extra layer of warmth, the sleeping blanket crumpled up at their feet, where they were less likely to move. Bilbo lay on his back and Thorin rested his ear on his breastbone, hands touching ribcages in a twin embrace. Thorin groaned softly, the steady thud of Bilbo’s heart a metronome to a fading lullaby that conducted them both to sleep.


End file.
